Hacker News Reader

If you read the source the parent poster provides, it plainly says "...digging out the operating system listings from the trash..." not DEC BASIC. Same deceptive pattern as the previous account making false claims so there's something weird going on here.

View on HN

What about this sentence don't you understand:

"The BASIC they did which we got ahold of the BASIC source code and enhanced t quite a bit was great."

That's a direct Bill Gates quote, see here: [1] https://americanhistory.si.edu/comphist/gates.htm

You're debunking your own claim. It says "enhanced it" presumably for running on the PDP-10. What it clearly does not say is ported or sold as MS BASIC.

You can use another word instead of "port". What is undeniable is that the Gates team looked at the DEC Basic source code, had extensive experience with it (having enhanced it), and the Basic they later made had functional similarities to DEC Basic. It is undeniable that DEC deserves some credit, as MS Basic is not a clean room implementation.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com