[HN Gopher] Bill Gates's Personal Easter Eggs in 8 Bit BASIC (2008)
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       Bill Gates's Personal Easter Eggs in 8 Bit BASIC (2008)
        
       Author : michalpleban
       Score  : 43 points
       Date   : 2025-04-26 19:43 UTC (3 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.pagetable.com)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.pagetable.com)
        
       | dang wrote:
       | Related. Others?
       | 
       |  _Bill Gates ' Personal Easter Eggs in 8 Bit Basic_ -
       | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30110068 - Jan 2022 (1
       | comment)
        
       | csl wrote:
       | An excellent article. Bill Gates himself posted a comment:
       | https://www.pagetable.com/?p=43#comment-1033
        
         | RetroTechie wrote:
         | Nice! From that comment:
         | 
         |  _" There were a lot of interesting versions of BASIC done for
         | Japanese machines this article misses (..)"_
         | 
         | Most likely referring to MSX-Basic. Which shows it's (c)
         | Microsoft on the startup screen.
         | 
         | Not the fastest, but a very full-featured Basic compared to
         | most Basics around @ the time. Iirc it does non-integer math on
         | BCD coded values. Single & double precision, so users can
         | decide RAM use/speed/precision tradeoffs.
         | 
         | Maybe there were other Japanese machines using MS-supplied
         | Basics before that. But _if_ so, likely few (any?) after MSX
         | was introduced ( '83), since that was big in Japan leaving
         | little room for 8-bit competitors.
        
       | ilrwbwrkhv wrote:
       | Bill gates is the only remaining hacker one can look upto. Yes he
       | was ruthless but also the amount of work he did for humanity was
       | orders of magnitude more than others.
       | 
       | The current crop of rich folks are really the wrong uns and come
       | from a deep history of bad families. Rotten blood really shows.
        
         | indigodaddy wrote:
         | One of my favorite past times is reading different Bill Gates
         | biographies. They never get old. Right now actually just
         | started reading the one he actually wrote recently. It's
         | excellent so far.
        
           | predictsoft wrote:
           | Or Paul Allen in Accidental Zillionaire.
        
         | chasil wrote:
         | What is interesting to consider is if Dave Cutler had not been
         | available or otherwise did not choose Microsoft in 1988.
         | 
         | Would Microsoft have adapted BSD NET/1, instead of continuing
         | OS/2?
        
       | asadm wrote:
       | I have a question, can something like this survive in today's
       | world? or have the disassembling tools now too advanced to easily
       | wipe something like this when cloning.
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | If you copy someone's code, always add a bunch of easter eggs
       | saying the code belongs to company X, Y and Z. Then nobody else
       | can claim it as their own.
        
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       (page generated 2025-04-26 23:00 UTC)