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Why do the big "guns" get more credits for their technical skills?

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m k:
Heron of Alexandria had a steam engine and gears but since slave labour was practically free of charge the time was not right for steam engine.

Locomotive was not needed because of labour cost but because of population density.

rstofer:

--- Quote from: pcprogrammer on September 21, 2022, 06:46:51 am ---The same applies to Bill Gates. What did he actually invent? Not MS-DOS, because that was made by Timothy Paterson. https://www.britannica.com/technology/MS-DOS

--- End quote ---

Two things:  He dropped out of Harvard to create Microsoft Basic for the recently introduced Altair 8800 which started an industry.  Home computing had been relegated to toggling short snippets and watching some lights blink.  And we could play music by writing very specific code and having the EMF picked up by a radio.  The 8800 came with 256 bytes of RAM!

Second:  He took the meeting with IBM where he sold MS-DOS even though he didn't have it or write it.  He bought it from someone who made a direct copy of CP/M.  Unfortunately for Digital Research, Gary Kildall, who actually created CP/M, decided to go fly his hang glider instead of taking the meeting.  Things could have been different.

Once the PC market exploded, MS-DOS was the only game in town for quite some time.  It was adequate for the time but Gates was smart enough to see the GUI on the wall and Microsoft developed Windows, the most ubiquitous operating system on the planet by a large margin.

pcprogrammer:
Which confirms what tom66 wrote. In the right place, at the right time. And it does deserve some respect and shows he could program, but so can many others. Still to me no reason to idolize.

And that is what I'm curious about. Why do people feel this need to idolize someone?

If you look at youtube and see these videos of the so called influencers, I don't see the why they get so much followers. Most of it is, in my eyes, to stupid to be true, if you get my drift.

wraper:

--- Quote from: pcprogrammer on September 21, 2022, 05:59:42 pm ---Which confirms what tom66 wrote. In the right place, at the right time. And it does deserve some respect and shows he could program, but so can many others. Still to me no reason to idolize.

--- End quote ---
You forgot about the right person. Gary Kildall had the chance too but blew it.

pcprogrammer:
Then it should be the wrong person at the right time in the right place :)

Because in a sense Gary Kildall was the right person as he created CP/M going on rstofer's words.

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