Ethan Winer and Bob Zale
Carl and Mark talk with Ethan and Bob about the Good Old Days of the BASIC language, and some of their experiences early on in the first days of the industry, as well as PowerBASIC past, present, and future, crazy tech-support calls, and other stories.
Guests:
Bob Zale
Bob Zale is founder of PowerBASIC, and is the author of their PowerBASIC compilers for Windows and DOS. His 24-year history started with BASIC/Z, the very first interactive compiler for CP/M and MDOS. He extended it to MS-DOS/PC-DOS, and in 1987 Borland published it as Turbo BASIC. In 1990, it was reborn as PowerBASIC, and has flourished ever since
Ethan Winer
After 20 years as a professional recording engineer and musician, Ethan Winer founded Crescent Software in 1986, quickly building it to become the leading provider of add-on products for use with Microsoft compiled BASIC for DOS. During that time Ethan wrote numerous articles about DOS BASIC and assembly language for all of the major programming magazines, and also served as a contributing editor for PC Magazine. In 1992 Ethan sold Crescent to his partner Don Malin, and retired in order to pursue his musical interests. Ethan has received Microsoft's MVP award every year since 1996 for his assistance in the Microsoft BASIC programming newsgroups. Crescent was sold in 1994 to Progress Software, who wanted to focus mainly on Crescent's Windows programming tools. Crescent products for Windows are currently sold by Sax Software.
Links:
- EthanWiner.Com http://www.ethanwiner.com
- PowerBASIC http://www.powerbasic.com