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 Maybe it wasn't a particular day, but it happened. It is the classic American story; strange cultural outsiders shake up the established order and transform the world. They rise to the top, gain wealth and power, and one day realize they've been assimilated.
Do I hate Microsoft? Heck no; I've always admired most of what they do, even I don't agree with all their decisions. I started programming a few years before the Altair was introduced. In fact, I remember starting at the cover of the January 1974 Popular Electronics and wondering what it all meant; most hackers all knew something big was on the horizon. Back in Cambridge, Bill Gates and Paul Allen were starring at the same cover, and darned if they didn't have a clearer vision than most people - a personal computer on every desk, and a Microsoft operating system on every computer. The geeks won. Yay for our team.
This is kind of a long story; I read an article at the wonderful Coding Horror blogsite today that got me thinking about the evolution of personal computers; what follows are my reminisences.
The Coding Horror story can be found here. He also links to Paul Graham's essay, Microsoft is Dead, more food for thought.
Back in ye olden days, PCs got no respect. I remember the National Computer Conference around 1977; the PC crowd was kept in the basement, nobody thought they could ever displace "real" computers. A few years later, I was programming at MicroPro (working on WordStar, the first big time semi-WYSIWYG text editor), and one of my first tasks was rewriting the CBIOS for new computers that came in. At the time, they ran mostly the CP/M operating system, and the CBIOS was a customized part of the BIOS (basic input-output system) that had to be rewritten for each new piece of hardware, in order to get our printer drivers to work. This was agonizing, and expensive.
Then along came DOS, which separated the drivers from the OS. Now it was the duty of the manufacturer to do the cusomizing. To the developer like me, every computer suddenly had a standard API to write to, and we could concentrate on writing software, rather than making hacks for the manufacturer. Sure, somebody else might have done this, but Microsoft did, and made the process of software development for the PC a lot easier and more interesting.
We had a room for testing that had hundreds of computers, from dozens of manufacturers, plus table after table of printers. Instead of having a customized OS for each computer, we suddenly had a single target to shoot for. This was the gift Bill Gates gave to the world; without it, the rapid acceptance of PCs might have taken much longer.
Even them there were purists and snobs who thought Microsoft was bastardizing the holy world of computer science, but they did make everything work (mostly). They went from being the lovable underdog who dethroned the mighty IBM into a kind of evil empire of their own. My gripes came mostly with some of their shady deals that forced computer manufacturers to use their OS, or at least pay for a license. We were also forced for a long time to use their development tools, which weren't always the best.
But something ahs happened in the last few years, with the total commoditization of hardware, and the deployment of inexpensive broadband - the operating system doesn't really matter that much. Part of this came into being when Microsoft, in a kludge to make Outlook work with web browsers, created the remote callback interface for javascript that resulted in the AJAX programming methods, that begat Web 2.0 and nrowser-based applications. That genie isn't going back in the bottle.
I'm not shedding any tears for Microsoft; they've got most of corporate America by the short hairs with MS Office. It is extremely expensive for large organizations to switch their basic software around. There are rumblings though; many foreign coutries are realizing what a trap this can be, and are embracing Open Source.
There are now alternatives to everything Microsoft does. Most web-based apps don't care what kind of computer you're using. Most users could care less what the servers are running. Developers have a huge amount of alternatives, and most are free. The point is that Microsoft is no longer controlling the destiny of developers and users as they once did. This is good for everyone; the great lesson I've learned through years of software engineering is to always avoid beinglocked into a single source. Competition makes everyone stronger. Even Microsoft. They are forced to compete on innovation, quality, and reliability, and to listen to their customers.
Like I said, I've always admired the msoft crowd. They hire very smart folks who can turn out great products, given the opportunity. It should be very interesting to see how they change in the next few years.
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