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Comment by c2 | Hacker News Reader

I feel like I've worked with people like Paul Allen (programmers). They tend to over value their own contributions and have "revisionist histories" when considering their relationship with their manager, but really it comes down to how much recognition they received.

The quote about Paul wanting significantly more shares for his contributions to SoftCard specifically ring true. SoftCard might have been a sales success, but comparing it's impact on Microsoft to Basic itself is a little off.

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It's hardly fair to look back with 30 years of hindsight and say that BASIC was more important to a company than SoftCard. Obviously, we know that now, but that doesn't speak to their specific situation.

IIRC, Paul Allen wrote most of Microsoft's original BASIC interpreter... And the emulator they used to develop it.

According to Wikipedia, you recall wrong. Gates wrote the interpreter and Allen wrote the emulator:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft#History

Thanks for the correction. I really had the impression Allen had more to do with the BASIC interpreter...

The _Vanity Fair_ excerpts have Allen writing the emulator, all the other development tools, the loader, and then he wrote 25% of the interpreter itself: http://www.vanityfair.com/business/features/2011/05/paul-all...

BASIC was the foundation of the company, by 1980 SoftCard was one project of many.

I don't discount the importance of SoftCard, it was actually key in the development of the relationship between IBM and Microsoft in the 80s, but even more key was the building of the relationship itself, which was largely driven by Gates.

Allen's attitude at the time reminds me of software developer coworkers who over emphasis the contributions that software development makes. I can understand Gates' reaction - Gates' job was not any easier and certainly not any less important, so why redistribute shares?

The wikipedia article on the softcard doesn't even mention Allen : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Softcard

Is that a mistake?

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