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Hmmm I cannot really claim to read Bill Gs mind. But the man was an accomplished programmer and knew that great software gets built when a hacker commits himself to doing nothing else but working on it for a couple of weeks. I think he was just trying to edge Hertzfield into working on the Switcher. Another interesting take away from the story is how Gates focuses on what is good for the users and not on M$ controlling the Switcher

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> I think he was just trying to edge Hertzfield into working on the Switcher.

He was trying to get him to do it really quickly so he could justify paying him as little as possible. He got it for $0, so that made him happy.

> Gates focuses on what is good for the users and not on M$ controlling the Switcher

He wanted to take advantage of the fact that his apps had very low memory footprints. Switcher was the way to do it. He had no need to control Switcher itself. The fact that he wanted the project done quickly to save money says to me he didn't really care about quality, which users obviously do.

This is an amusing lesson in how different people interpret the exact same thing so differently.

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