altair

The Altair was released in January 1975 and Altair Basic was released in March 1975.

In 1975, writing a Basic interpreter for the Altair was an idea with IPO potential, because Bill Gates had it.

How might this company turn into something huge, the way that Altair Basic turned into Microsoft?

Didn't the story go that Paul Allen wrote a loader for Altair Basic this way on pen and paper on an airplane?

So I feel comfortable offering severe criticism of languages like RPG-III and Fortran II and Altair Basic and Bliss-36.

And although the Altair Basic may have led to it - it in itself was not enough to catapult them to their future success.

However I am having a hard time trying to understand(english wise) this sentence - What microsoft is this the Altair Basic of?

Some of the advice YC partners give seems harmful because of survivorship bias (Basic for the Altair -> Microsoft).

Bitcoin was the Altair of digital currency.

There was nothing special about Altair Basic.

> It's stretching belief to call VB and Altair Basic the same programming language.

Even if you had the knowledge to know how people would use computers in the future and what sorts of things would be most in demand, Microsoft wasn't necessarily the best bet way back in the Altair Basic era.

PG's "What Microsoft is the Altair Basic of?" applies really well to Snapchat.

) with the Altair - the spark of one tech revolution - also contains the "CCD's - TV Camera Tube Successor?".

I think pg addresses this in his most recent essay, "What Microsoft is this the Altair Basic of?" [5] In his words– "they practically all seemed lame at first." So we have to learn to live in a world where our initially valid assessments of a thing might become rapidly invalid because of change.

Vidly is building on Twitter in the same way Micro-soft (as it was then called) was building on the Altair.

Altair had a business model, they sold something of value for money.

Altair had a business model figured out.