Re: Innovation

["Bruce R. McFarling" <ecbm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Tue, 07 Oct 1997 08:29:50 -0700 Paul Henry Rosenberg
<rad@xxxxxxx> wrote:

>>         Let's not confuse innovation with invention.  The innovation was
>> not the development of the Basic syntax, or the implementation on
>> minicomputers.  It was not the underlying logic of the Basic interpretor --
>> Gates ripped this from a minicomputer Basic implementation.  The innovation
>> was the implementation of a subset of Basic for microcomputers that was
>> offered for sale,

>Sure this was an innovation.  There were SCADS of such innovations.  But
>this elides the whole question of significance -- technological as well
>as economic significance -- as well of the question of how fundamental
>an innovation is.  The invention of BASIC was CLEARLY a fundamental
>innovation -- the first readily teachable programming language.

	The *invention* of "the first readily teachable programming
language" is certainly not an innovation.  An innovation is a change
in production activities. See, for example, Schumpeter's _Theory of
Economic Development_.  Sure, commerical hypemasters have coopted
the use of the term because its an even punchier way to say 'new and
improved', but there is no excuse for it to be used so sloppily on
an mailing list devoted to discussing the economic thought of people
like Keynes, Kalecki and Robinson.
	I have not looked at the 'minicomputer revolution' as closely
as I have looked at the 'microcomputer revolution', so you tell me:
how many people were taught Basic in the minicomputer revolution, and
as a purported major innovation in the teaching of programming, how
important was this in increasing the number and/or quality of trained
programmers available?  Or are you tracing the development of integrated
development environments to the combined editing / execution facilities
provided by early Basic's.

>The porting of BASIC to microcomputers was an innovation, no doubt,
>but you're a long way from showing that it was fundamental, or how
>significant it was.

	I don't think the porting of BASIC itself to microcomputers
was any more or less of an innovation than the porting of Forth or
Pascal or C to microcomputers.

>> at a time when some microcomputers were still being
>> programmed by punching the actual machine language sequence into the
>> computer a hexadecimal or octal digit at a time

>Some, not many! <G>  (Was you there, Charlie?)

	One thing it is important to keep track of is the absolute
numbers that we are talking about.  It wasn't until the 80's
that any single model of computer sold in a million.

>> and most hobbyists gave
>> away code for free.  By the early 80's a substantial portion of the free
>> portable software available were Basic listings

>There was no such portable software, the media used to store
>programs for different computers were incompatible.

	There certainly were.  I typed ten or twenty basic computer games
and thingamabobs into my Commodore 64 from listings that were not
specifically meant for the Commodore 64.  Of course, anything other
than TTY mode was unportable.

>> -- and more likely than not,
>> the Basic on which it ran was developed or ripped off by Gates /
>> Microsoft, and provided with the system in return for a license fee.

>Actually, Gates main contribution was to show that it COULD be done.

	Showing that something can be done by putting it into practice,
like successfully getting one firm after another to license your
Basic and pay you on a per-machine basis for code you deliver on a
per-model basis was an technological innovation.  It's easy, especially
with the seemingly large number of engineers on pkt, to forget that
technical innocation is only a part, and sometimes only a small part,
of technological innovation.

>BASIC (it's an acronym, so it *should be* all caps) is a programming
>language, NOT system software.  BASIC was used by end users, who swapped
>a good deal of home-coded programs, but serious stuff -- like
>spreadsheers & wordprocessors & even the first games  -- continued to be
>written in assembly language.

	OK, if you prefer to call it the user interface, command shell, or
whatever, fine.

>> Obviously, the fact that serious business programs
>> were mostly developed in assembly language to work directly with calls
>> to a disk operating for CP/M or Apple II computers would be a flaw with
>> Basic, but then Gates seems to have figured that out sometime in the
>> early 1980's, didn't he?

>The meaning here is murky beyond belief.  Rather than try to untanlge
>the whole ball of yard, I'll just make 1 observation: Portability
>continues to be a problem to this very day, and Microsoft at times USES
>portatbility problems to it's advantage -- as it's now doing in the
>browser/java extension wars.

	I find it hilarious that this is murky beyond belief when the
it just makes the same point that is made above -- that while Basic
was important for the dominant portion of the early microcomputer
market, that the emergence of 'serious' uses, that rapidly developed
into a dominance of the market by 'serious' uses for microcomputers,
was clearly passing Basic by.  And the commercial model that was the
most innovative aspect of Microsoft's Basic remains part of the
industry today.

Virtually,

Bruce McFarling, Newcastle, NSW
ecbm@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx