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Comment by troyk | Hacker News Reader

I'm old enough to know he didn't carry a computer on the plane....

But too young to know writing code and speccing data structures on paper (and/or napkins...) was quite common before airplane-friendly computers were available? (And for a long time after, really; ubiquitous ownership of laptops is a quite recent thing).

From this Woz quote it was pretty common:

"I wrote all my code on paper in hexadecimal. I couldn't afford an assembler to translate my programs into hexadecimal bytes, I did it myself. Even my BASIC interpreter is all hand written. I'd type 4K into the Apple I and ][ in about an hour. I, and many others too I think, could sit down and start typing hexadecimal in for a SMALL program to solve something that occured or something that somebody else wanted. I'd do this all the time for demos. I certainly don't remember which hexadecimal codes are which 6502 instructions any longer, but it was a part of life back then."

When I started my programming career, my first boss did not know how to use a text editor. He could perform a randomizing routine in his head but he trembled at using a text editor -- he still used punched cards and/or a mainframe utility that emulated a punch card. And lots of programmers coded first on columnar grid paper (shades of green and white, demarcations at 8, 12, 16 to help you indent properly.

My community college still had us writing C on huge tablets of that IBM grid paper in the late 90s. I can't imagine writing huge amounts of production-worthy code that way.

Possibly stupid question : Why did he not write the assembler himself ?

I'd guess because of memory limitations. Some more info on those days:

http://www.landsnail.com/apple/local/applewoz.htm

http://www.gamasutra.com/blogs/JohnSzczepaniak/20130507/1918...

I used to fill spiral notebooks with code back in the 70's. This was back when I'd have to go to the "computer center" to use the actual computer.

I still prefer to write on paper on planes.

Me too - although if it's code, then it's going to more like pseudo code or simply "concepts" and ideas.

For that matter, pocket calculators programmable in BASIC started becoming quite inexpensive in the mid-80s.

According to this, Gates did some of the design, but Marc McDonald, employee #1 at MS, helped with the design, and did the coding in 1977:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File_Allocation_Table#Original_...

Like a lot of old stories remembered after-the-fact to make a point, it seems that the truth is more complicated.

Thanks for pointing this out. It's all too common to overlook employee contributions to projects.

I think the point of the story wasn't proper attribution, it was a way for Gates to prod people to work faster.

By misappropriating their work?

I coded the entire linux operating system in one hour. Why can't you do something just as amazing with the same amount of time?

"but appropriation of work isn't relevant at all!!!!!" Of course it's relevant. The prodding doesn't work if the justification for the prodding is a lie.

http://31.media.tumblr.com/981b9455b35ca551cbfd2227110b9da2/...

According to one book (Hackers?), he wrote the loader code for BASIC for the Altair on the plane to NM.

If I remember right, he did have a Compaq "portable" he lugged around in the early portable days. Something like http://oldcomputers.net/compaqi.html

It obviously came out after DOS / FAT.

That was Paul Allen, if I remember correctly.

I'm pretty sure it was Bill Gates (although Paul Allen could of too). I thought the source was a Chaos Manor column back in the day.

nah... they decided Paul should go because Bill still looked like he was a high school sophomore.

http://harvardmagazine.com/2013/09/walter-isaacson-on-bill-g...

Pen and paper works just fine on a plane and I'm old enough to know that back in those days lots of coding was done that way.

At one work place, I spent most of the day away from the computer (terminal) waiting for the operational boys to get their stuff done.

I would spend most of my coding day scribbling out code changes onto the fanfold printout.

And today quite a few people complain about having to code on a whiteboard while at a job interview. How times have changed.

For a lot of people, writing on a whiteboard with 4 prospective employers breathing down their neck is totally different than sitting on a plane or in a quiet corner alone with some paper to write on.

Or pen or paper

> pen or paper

How did he do it with just paper? Origami? ;-)

Obviously he folded it into little bits. :)

"pen or paper", not "pen xor paper" ;).

If your not coding in blood you're taking the soft option.

blood.

People didn't write computer code in IDEs back then, or even directly in text editors really.

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