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At the bottom of the that blog post, Gates published the original source code that he so fondly remembers—the very same code that ultimately led to the growth and success of Microsoft. You can download the original Microsoft source code here (PDF).
Microsoft began with a magazine cover
In January 1975, Bill Gates and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen read an article in the magazine Popular Electronics about the Altair 8800 home computer by a small company named MITS. "When Paul and I saw that cover, we knew two things: the PC revolution was imminent, and we wanted to get in on the ground floor," recalls Gates.
The plan was to create software that would allow Altair 8800 owners to develop their own programs using the easy-to-learn BASIC programming language. As such, Gates and Allen decided to develop a BASIC interpreter for the Altair 8800.
The interpreter would convert BASIC commands into machine code that the Altair 8800 could understand. A maximum of 4 kilobytes was available for the interpreter so that Altair owners still had enough memory available to run the other programs.
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