BASIC PERFORMANCE

Microsoft Corporation (NASDAQ: MSFT) is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, United States that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions. Established on 4^th April 1975, by Bill Gates and Paul Allen, to develop and sell BASIC interpreters for the Altair 8800, Microsoft rose to dominate the home computer operating system market with MS-DOS in the mid-1980s, followed by the Microsoft Windows line of operating systems.

Gates

Allen

The company is 37 years old. As of 2011 the total assets of the company apparently amount to US$ 108.7 billion, with revenues of US$ 69.94 billion. Co-founder Bill Gates has since established, along with his wife Melinda, The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. They donate just over US$ 2 million a day to various causes. That is not a shabby donation. Paul Allen is apparently no slouch when it comes to charitable donations either. The Gates Foundation was established in 1994, only 19 years after the birth of Microsoft. To go from mail order do it yourself kits to being in a position to give away $2 million a day before your 20^th birthday is an extraordinary economic event.

The interesting thing is that it all begins with language. BASIC – Beginner’s All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code - is a general purpose, high-level programming language.  Integer BASIC is the language developed by Steve Wozniak for Apple. Basic interpreters are what make the difference.

Kemeny

Kutz

The original ‘language’ was developed/designed at Dartmouth College by John George Kemeny and Thomas Eugene Kutz between 1963 and 1964. I cannot find any indication that Kemeny or Kutz have anything like the assets or income of Gates and Allen. Sadly Kemeny died in 1992 aged 66. He was President of Dartmouth College for eleven years and lived near the campus. He had returned to full time teaching after his presidency of the college. Kutz is still with us aged 83 and Emeritus Professor at Darthmouth.  Both stayed true to their vocations as teachers of mathematics. I do not think there are many people on this earth who have not had occasion to use their basic language at one time or another, without even knowing. That’s the ultimate in performance writing; it performs without you even knowing it’s there.