The Microsoft BASIC syntax is certainly inspired by DEC BASIC, but the actual implementation is completely different. DEC BASIC compiles the program source code into bytecode, while Microsoft BASIC tokenizes each line as it's entered and then interprets the tokens at runtime. You have to remember that minicomputers had vastly different capabilities from 8-bit microcomputers. Even if Gates did look at the code for DEC BASIC, there's not much there he could have used.
replyFrom [2]:
reply> Gates said: "I'd skip out on athletics and go down to this computer center. We were moving ahead very rapidly: Basic, FORTRAN, LISP, PDP-10 machine language, digging out the operating system listings from the trash and studying those."
Is there more context clarifying this means they studied the source code of DEC Basic?
In this [1] interview Gates says that he and his group got DEC BASIC source code and enhanced it.
reply"The BASIC they did which we got ahold of the BASIC source code and enhanced t quite a bit was great."
replyThanks! I think this is still talking about his high school volunteer hacking rather than the MS Basic era. (i.e. doesn't obviously support your "ported it".)
They got the source code of DEC Basic, studied it, "enhanced quite a bit" then wrote their own Basic which is similar to DEC Basic, and you don't think it is a derivative? Ok. It is a derivative in my book.
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