
Bill Gates in Byte Magazine: The Future of Software Design (1983) - kick
https://archive.org/stream/byte-magazine-1983-08/1983_08_BYTE_08-08_The_C_Language#page/n399/mode/2up
======
nabla9
The same edition has articles about coordinates systems in graphics and Gaus-
Jordan elimination method. There are circuit diagrams and program listings. It
was a real trade magazine.

Today that type of content is almost exclusively in in blogs.

Magazines write about stuff like "The Most Important Agile Trends to Follow in
2020". It's part marketing, influencing kind fluff where people write opinions
about soft issues where you can't be clearly right or wrong.

~~~
giancarlostoro
> Magazines write about stuff like "The Most Important Agile Trends to Follow
> in 2020". It's part marketing, influencing kind fluff where people write
> opinions about soft issues where you can't be clearly right or wrong.

The mainstream ones sure, but there's others out there that don't. At least
2600 still the same.

~~~
kick
Related: 2600 recently started publishing DRM-free PDFs.

They're kind of floundering for funding, so if you like that sort of thing,
you should probably grab a copy or subscription.

[https://www.2600.com/content/message-our-
readers](https://www.2600.com/content/message-our-readers)

~~~
nickt
I’d not looked at 2600 in years, but did as you suggested and I’m glad to see
it’s not changed much at all! What a great magazine - looking forward to
reading it again each quarter.

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RcouF1uZ4gsC
I love how the very next article is titled "The 8086 - An Architecture for the
Future"

I love reading old computer magazines and the archive.org collection is
amazing. One interesting thing about doing that is that it provides a first
hand account of what a lot of the people that worked in the industry thought
the future of computing would be like. It is fascinating to compare that view
with how it turned out.

I wonder what people 30 years from now with think when they read HN archives?

~~~
sedatk
Here is an issue of Computer Design magazine from 1983 which I scanned:
[https://archive.org/details/computer-design-
magazine](https://archive.org/details/computer-design-magazine)

It mentions:

\- ArpaNet can be the future of commerce

\- C is the key to portability

\- Apple's Lisa introduces a revolutionary UI

~~~
Stratoscope
Thanks for scanning that! I used to read Computer Design back then, but I
haven't seen one of the old issues in a while.

Coincidentally, the theme of this August 1983 BYTE is The C Language, with a
dozen articles on C.

As always with these wonderful old BYTE magazines, at least skim through the
whole thing. The cover art and the ads are a real treat. Hit the Home key and
start from there!

~~~
bluedino
Before I had a computer, I had a box of Popular Science magazines from the
early 80's.

They were about 5 years old when I had them, so they talked about the ZX81,
TRS-80, and the PCjr.

Everything was already obsolete but they were fun to read. The best was a
review of electronic typewriters that could double as a printer for your
computer!

~~~
Stratoscope
Ah, the late great IBM PCjr (PC Junior), with its innovative squishy chiclet
keyboard.

I was writing PC software at the time, and I knew I needed to make my programs
compatible with the PCjr. The Macy's store in Stanford Shopping Center was one
of the few local retailers promising they would have them in stock on the
release date. So I called Macy's to reserve one.

When I went there to pick mine up, they said, "oh, we're sorry, we got 10 of
them and you were number 11 on the list."

Bullet dodged!

------
nv-vn
Really forward-thinking stuff, but then again that's why Microsoft succeeded.
It seems like all of Gates' predictions were spot-on in this article.

~~~
jojo14
"Really forward-thinking"? All of what Bill Gates "envisioned" in this 1983
article was already done or about to be done at that time. Gates is well known
for being bad at prediction and for having no vision to imagine the future. It
certainly is not the reason why Microsoft kind of "succeeded". No need to
rewrite history.

~~~
petra
>> Gates is well known for being bad at prediction and for having no vision to
imagine the future.

Interesting. Got any references for that ?

~~~
wankeler
640k more than enough for anyone

Multiple overlapping windows not useful

------
Izmaki
I love reading the advertisements for computer systems. 256K RAM for your
business applications - can you imagine the potential?

------
warpdrive
He looks to be laying out his company roadmap in the open. Is this a good
business strategy? Do you see similar articles from current founders?

~~~
jerf
Roadmaps are a PR tool, and something you give to you customers to plan with,
not something you keep secret. You can find all sorts of articles like this if
you look in the right places.

Of course, they're also what you want your competitors to think you're doing,
messages to Wall Street or investors, all the other usual things you'd expect
from a PR vehicle.

------
keithnz
I love how that issue has all these other articles that have hidden gems of
insight of things that, with the benefit of hindsight, would have been good to
have taken note of. Including gems on Lisp, on the philosophy of designing
software for unix and to make things small and testable as soon as possible.
How things like structured programming had a lot of fluff talk around it that
obscured the tiny gems of good ideas, that people got carried away with the
"process".

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rietta
I downloaded the whole PDF and one thing I find mesmerizing is just how
sophisticated the business graphs looked back then. It seems we're only
starting to slowly catch up with these in many web apps again.

~~~
willis936
The graph on page 350 is a good example. Gone is the golden age of data
visualization.

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herf
Interesting how many of the integrations he talks about (OLE/DDE) are exactly
the ones that mobile sandboxes make difficult to do these days.

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EddieCPU
[https://tech-insider.org/software/research/acrobat/8308.pdf](https://tech-
insider.org/software/research/acrobat/8308.pdf)

“The promise is that the existing machines could do the job much better-more
easily, more efficiently - if software were better designed.”

'Vista 8'

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peter303
Andreason said this more succinctly in 'Software eats the world'.

~~~
dharmon
Yeah, but that was 30 years later.

