On 2004-08-05, Joost Kremers <joostkremers@yahoo.com> wrote:

<snip>
>> MS's success is related to Bill Gates' ability to define
>> effective business processes. The guy would make billions if he
>> wanted to sell flowers! And given his continued extreme success
>> I just can't accept that any of it is an accident (which is
>> indeed exactly what I too originally thought it was for several
>> years in the 80's).
>
> no, absolutely not. when he first went to IBM with MS-DOS, rather than
> selling the software, which most pimply-faced geeks probably would have
> done, he licensed it to them, under terms that allowed him to license it
> to others as well. so when other manufacturers started building
> IBM-compatible PC's, he could simply license them a copy as well. that's
> not chance, that's very intelligent business tactics.

Gates' success is almost entirely a function of who, not what, he is. He is
the son of a lawyer and a social doyen (sp?). He was raised to be a
gamesman, where everything in life is a competition. Absent any enforceable
rules, he writes his own.

He learned from his father that success means doing it and cleaning up
afterward, where the cleaning crew (legal department) is his father's law
firm.

He got the contact with IBM through his mother's social contacts.
Otherwise, how the hell would IBM have ever heard of him? Kildall lost out,
not because he was flying, but because his wife wouldn't sign a blanket NDA.
Gates didn't have to worry about that because he made the deal and then went
out and got the goods. QDOS (Quick and Dirty Operating System) became MSDOS
(MicroSoft Disk Operating System); whatever the hell that means.

He bullied Paul Allen into giving Microsoft to him. Paul needed help and
Gates told him only on the condition that he (Gates) was in charge. How was
Paul to know what was to come?

You call classic robber baron piracy intelligent business tactics, and
obviously many would agree. I think history will judge it otherwise.

> he doesn't know too much about proper software design, though...

Not according to Torvalds: "He (Gates) has nothing to teach me about
software engineering, and I have nothing to teach him about business". Or
something of the sort.

<snip>
>> Personally, I wouldn't call it chance, but I think C++'s
>> popularity is strictly a result of it being derived from C, and
>> more or less representing an Object Oriented version of C. C of
>> course is popular because it is an exceptionally efficient and
>> logical systems programming language.
>
> effective, true, logical, only in a sense. C grew out of the way hardware
> was designed. on the lowest level, you have to address a computer in some
> language that has the same fundamental principles as C: assignments and
> commands. and because the hardware is designed that way, there will always
> be a need for something like C. but IMVHO lisp shows that there is also
> another approach to programming, one that is *not* ultimately forced by the
> hardware design. (originally, lisp wasn't even meant to be a programming
> language...) and from my (admittedly still small) experience with it, i
> believe that that really is a better approach: if you design a programming
> language, you should start out with how you would want to program a
> computer, not with how the computer needs to be addressed on the most basic
> level.

Good assessment, I think. Now, I'm not a programmer or a software
professional, albeit I have written stuff for myself and read a bit. So
what follows is my (uninformed as may be) opinion. I offer it as an
outsider's observation.

With regard computers, it would seem reasonable to assume that one either
talks to computers in a language the computer would understand, or one
should train the computer to understand a language humans would understand.
Probably the former makes more sense, as humans are more adaptable than
computers.

I've perused Deitel/Deitel on C++, and its obviously very powerful in terms
of its ability to handle complex systems, but it makes one have to think and
work its own way. The single benefit there is that it forces everyone thus,
and so people can at least comprehend somewhat of what others have done.

So far as I can tell, it does nothing that cannot be done in C, except that
one has to establish the superstructure oneself. But the net result is that
one creates a high level language each time one sets out anew. Reusing code
makes that much easier, but then others who would maintain the code must
needs learn the created language.

Am I correct in my belief that some high level languages are actually
written in C? If so, that says something, I think. Not sure what...


NB: I've morphed. "pseudonym" > "no.nickname" > "name". Probably not done
yet, time will tell.
--
Email is wtallman at olypen dot com