Microsoft open sources GWBASIC

[Fred Cisin]

On Fri, 29 May 2020, ben via cctalk wrote:
> BTW Microsoft also had Fortan, You don't hear much about that.
> Ben.

One reaason why you don't hear much about that is because the 
first version of Microsoft Fortran for the PC wasn't real great.
It was slow.  A Sieve Of Erastothanes benchmark compiled in it ran slower 
than in interpreted BASICA (GWBASIC with access to the BASIC ROMs in the 
5150)
It was written in Microsoft Pascal.
(Bob Wallace, who wrote the Microsoft Pascal, once told me to never use 
the run-time library of it)
Although I used it for teaching beginning Fortran for a few semesters, in 
the mid 1980s, I don't remember much about it.
("Don't use any 6 character variable names ending in QQ." doesn't help the 
discussion much)