Nearly four decades ago #BillG promised Andre Warufsel and me to send us the source code of his #Basic4K for the #MITS #Altair. He never did and @ModernDayNTK described one of my repeted reminders as 'winning last week's Stalking Bill Gates challenge'.
Three days ago he did eventually publish a scan of the source code on his blog.
I updated the story at https://gizmonaut.net/soapflakes/EXE-199711.html
#BillGates unearths #Microsoft's ancient code like a proud nerd dad
Founder shares 4K #Altair #BASIC source ahead of 50th anniversary
The code was the foundation on which Microsoft was built. Before Windows and before Office, there was a carefully crafted BASIC interpreter designed to fit within the limited resources available on the #Altair8800.
https://www.theregister.com/2025/04/03/bill_gates_altair_basic/
The Code: https://www.gatesnotes.com/microsoft-original-source-code
Starting a fresh new profile, let's introduce me.
I'm Nicolas from north of France, I like old computers, I have a collection of #amiga, #C64, #amstrad, #atari. I also like #computerhistory and started to code emulators, I made a #teletype, #altair and #Intel8080 emulator, and also a #Z80 then a #trs80 emulator coded in #rust. Currently experimenting with #Zig, and #riscv64 assembly.
@jzsimon @arclight @JosetAEtzel
Check this fresh updated article:
https://codingidol.com/how-to-plot-in-python-without-matplotlib/
A great read of an earlier time with a different ethos: the story of the creator of the first personal computer.
https://every.to/the-crazy-ones/the-secret-father-of-modern-computing
the hands-on tutorials for data visualization are now also available in German – many thanks to Nadine Geffers!
Die praktischen Tutorials zu Datenvisualisierung liegen nun auch auf Deutsch vor – herzlichen Dank an Nadine Geffers für die Übersetzung!
The Secret Father of Modern Computing: How Ed Roberts created the personal computer industry—and then walked away
https://every.to/the-crazy-ones/the-secret-father-of-modern-computing
#Altair #computinghistory #computers #vintagecomputing #retrocomputing #retrocomputers #vintagecomputers #S100 #CPM #8080 #IMSAI #EdRoberts #ACM
Why do some organic molecules have a color? It's usually because of a long chain of conjugated bonds. In my #cheminformatics blog post, I search 20K datapoints to find a series of molecules where extending the conjugated chain increases the absorption wavelength. https://bertiewooster.github.io/2024/10/15/Color-from-Conjugation.html #RDKit #Python #Polars #chemistry #greatTables #Altair
#altair charts on python-fiddle powered by #pyodide: https://python-fiddle.com/examples/altair
#Altair Partners with New York #Yacht Club on #AmericasCup Bid for team #AmericanMagic ahead of its quest for the 37th America’s Cup, beginning August 22. https://insidehpc.com/2024/06/altair-partners-with-new-york-yacht-club-on-americas-cup-bid/ #sailing #hpc
"I know now that I'm onto something good when everyone else thinks it’s a bad idea,” he said. “I just didn't figure that out until later."
"How Ed Roberts created the personal computer industry—and then walked away": https://every.to/the-crazy-ones/the-secret-father-of-modern-computing via @garius
Went to RICM and saw several of their systems. They have a PDP/9 they are restoring, PDP/11, and quite a few working vintage computers and gaming systems. Next time more pictures and take their tour of their warehouse.
A lot of the things were fully functional and you were allowed to use them. Amazing experience.
What's faster at solving for prime numbers a restored Altair 8800 or an AMD Threadripper? The results may surprise you! Click to find out more! :) /sarcasm
On a serious note, it is interesting watching the head to head of the prime numbers that Dave does across languages and systems. The headline and the shtick for this particular contest are cute but not the reason to watch the video. It was a good exploration of the Altair in actual use including bootstrapping it with the switches etc. And no, the results will not be surprising at all but still impressive to see how far we've come in raw compute performance in the last ~50 years. #Altair #RetroComputing #RetroComputers
TESTED: Altair 8800 vs AMD Threadripper: Which is Faster?
Hi #python users. Which data visualisation library would you recommend to an #rstats user who loves #ggplot2 customisations (and #plotly for interactive plots)? I'm looking for something very customisable to produce interactive #dataviz. Should I go for #altair #bokeh #plotly #seaborn or none of them?
We have a new version of the data visualization tutorials written in #Python using #Pandas and #Altair:
https://infovis.fh-potsdam.de/tutorials/
The first tutorials lay the foundation, after which common data types are treated in 3 steps:
Prepare → 
Process → 
Present
If you have any ideas or suggestions for improvement, or if you're using these tutorials in your own teaching (or learning!), I'd love to hear about it. Many thanks already to @ikyriazi for lots of feedback on this revision!
Altair 5.0 is out! 
Vega-Altair (Altair for short) is a statistical visualization library for Python built on top of the Vega-Lite declarative grammar.
This version introduces selection parameters and variable parameters, experimental support for the DataFrame Interchange Protocol (hence compatibility with Polars!), and much more.
You can install it with `pip install "altair==5.0.0"`
And read the complete release notes at https://github.com/altair-viz/altair/releases/tag/v5.0.0
59 years ago today, the first computer program written in #BASIC was run.
The easy-to-learn and -use #programming language revolutionized #computing. A decade later, #BillGates would co-found #Microsoft to develop and sell the BASIC interpreter for the #Altair 8800, the first commercially successful desktop microcomputer.
More from when #Dartmouth celebrated BASIC’s fiftieth anniversary: https://www.dartmouth.edu/basicfifty
