[aabajian]

People play up Bill Gates’ connections, sure, but next to no 16-year-olds could program BASIC in assembly.

Microsoft’s success was as much to do with them being a programming languages company first. DOS, Windows 3.1, and even Windows 95 shipped with an interpreter and compiler for their BASIC and C, respectively. This empowered developers to use and write code for the OS out-of-the-box.

[nine_k]

Correct regarding the BASIC. MS DOS (and even MSX BASIC and MSX DOS) was pretty important though in the grand scheme of the ecosystem forming.

But neither Windows nor DOS shipped with a C compiler; it's not a Unix. DOS shipped with an IDE for BASIC, and compilers were available but not free. The more accessible option was Turbo Pascal (and then Delphi 1), Visual Basic was also popular but more costly.

GCC appeared in 1987 but only worked acceptably under Unix-like OSes.

[LtWorf]

Windows didn't come with any C compiler out of the box. And no basic either. Where did you get this idea?

Also qbasic was not the same as quickbasic, and it had a limit on the LOC and other limitations.

[unregistereddev]

Windows 95 and 98 came with QBasic, but it was not installed by default. It was an optional "extra feature" that could be added from your Windows installation media.

I do not know about earlier versions of Windows.

[LtWorf]

qbasic is not a C compiler. It was also not possible to make windows applications with it… and it lacked the option to generate a .exe file.

It was more of a toy.

[unregistereddev]

I apologize for misreading your post, I thought you asserted that Windows did not come with QBasic. I'm well aware of what QBasic was - it's what I used when I first learned programming. It was an excellent toy for 12yo me.

[wkat4242]

Hmm yeah Gates was a bit of a programming prodigy sure. But none of Microsoft's success really has anything to do with that. It was all about smart business acumen, starting with the deal made with IBM, being allowed to sell MS-DOS to PC clone makers.

[MangoCoffee]

To me, Visual Basic (not Visual Basic .NET) was the game changer for Microsoft. It empowered many power users (user, not programmer) to create software that they couldn’t find on the market.

[bluedino]

Microsoft shipped OSes with a crappy version of BASIC. But every computer did, before the PC came out.

[bogantech]

The BASIC interpreter on most of those other computers was written by Microsoft