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- Hacker News
- Gates would have had access to Dartmouth BASIC, which he likely referenced and possibly plagiarized while writing Altair BASIC. Back in that day, people shared software freely, so Gates took advantage.by anonymousiam
- It's really neat that many of the comments in the 6502 version[0] match this 8080 version. I've only done a quick review but there's a lot of duplication. It's interesting to see how the 6502 version reflects its direct lineage from this version.
The table of constants for the SIN function doesn't have the two bogus constants that make up the "WAIT 6502" easter egg[1]. Since WAIT wasn't in this version that easter egg couldn't exist anyway. That's not to say there isn't an easter egg of some kind in here, but it's not that one.
(It's hard to believe it's been a year since the 6502 version was released. It seems like just a few days ago I was hunting around in the code for the easter egg...)
[0] https://opensource.microsoft.com/blog/2025/09/03/microsoft-o...
by EvanAnderson - These two guys* were crazy productive in the 2 months they worked. Just the level of commenting shows how much thought they were able to give it during that span.
* plus the math package guy
by piker - There's a good deep dive into the code here:by ChocMontePy
- One of the things I'm often curious about is how various BASIC interpreters organize memory for string storage. You'd think there's some way to reclaim memory after an expression involving intermediate strings is finished. But you don't see descriptions for how BASIC works in this regard.
- Associated blog post from 2025:
Celebrate 50 years of Microsoft with the company's original Source code
https://www.gatesnotes.com/microsoft-original-source-code
(Discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43575884)
- Here is the 6502 assembly source code for Microsoft Basic:by davidfekke
- Credit should be given to Digital Equipment Corporation. Back then software isn't what companies made money on, it is hardware. Source code wasn't guarded as a secret as it is today, and you could find print outs in the dumpster [1]. Bill Gates and Paul Allen found the source code of DEC Basic [2] and ported it. (Wikipedia says Microsoft Basic was "inspired by" DEC's PDP-10 BASIC-PLUS.)
[1] https://www.businessinsider.com/10-things-you-didnt-know-abo...
[2] https://www.theregister.com/software/2000/06/29/bill-gates-r...
by petilon