Oh, and my brother wrote MS-DOS

Doug Paterson, his brother wrote DOS

So, I was in KUOW's studios this morning to record a bit for the BBC (it'll air next week sometime, I'll let you know when that'll be on). The producer on the BBC told me that they have something like 160 million listeners around the world. Whew.

Anyway, over in KUOW my producer was Douglas Paterson (although I didn't know that until after the conversation below happened). After the session we started talking about things and he mentioned "my brother worked at Microsoft for 15 years."

"Oh, and what did he do?"

"He worked on the Visual Basic team before retiring."

That caught my ear cause I got my start working for BasicPro magazine that later turned into Visual Basic Programmer's Journal which later turned into Visual Studio Magazine.

But then he said:

"Oh, and my brother wrote MS-DOS."

"Your brother is Tim?" I asked. (I knew Tim Paterson worked for the VB team).

"Yeah."

What a trip.

Don't understand the significance yet?

Well, remember how Bill Gates got started in the operating system business? He bought DOS from Seattle Computer Works for about $65,000 and the rest is history. Tim has a bunch of links to history about MS-DOS, if you wanna know.

Oh, and Doug is interesting too. He got a PHd in anthropology, traveled the world, taught in various colleges before getting his job at NPR, which he says he absolutely loves cause he gets to meet interesting people every day.

You never know when you're gonna meet someone interesting, that's for sure, and just shows why you should stop and take time to get to know the people who don't seem to be all that interesting at first glance.

One thing I've learned is that the most interesting stuff (and the most interesting stories) are being done by people you don't know, or who you think are unimportant.

It's why when someone from India that I didn't know called me up and asked to have me on his podcast I said "sure."

Why? Cause I know I'll learn something. That guy is Kiruba Shankar and I'll be on his podcast this afternoon.

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18 thoughts on “Oh, and my brother wrote MS-DOS

  1. Wow that’s amazing and yeah I couldent agree more, you should always take your time to get to know others you dont know so well especially as theres so many stories out there to be told and lots of them are related to us, even though at first we dont know it!

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  2. Wow that’s amazing and yeah I couldent agree more, you should always take your time to get to know others you dont know so well especially as theres so many stories out there to be told and lots of them are related to us, even though at first we dont know it!

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  3. Ah. That’s why your name was familiar when I first heard about your blog. You were the contact at Fawcette when I wrote about Visual Basic 1.0 error handling for BASICPro back in 1992.

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  4. Ah. That’s why your name was familiar when I first heard about your blog. You were the contact at Fawcette when I wrote about Visual Basic 1.0 error handling for BASICPro back in 1992.

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  5. Please let us know if we can download your interview from BBC online. Yes BBC has much more than 160 million listeners around the world and actually BBC English has 160 million listeners and BBC broadcasts on many languages.

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  6. Please let us know if we can download your interview from BBC online. Yes BBC has much more than 160 million listeners around the world and actually BBC English has 160 million listeners and BBC broadcasts on many languages.

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  7. Blah blah blah…one name drop after another. Keep it up, you’re looking more like a buffoon every day.

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  8. Blah blah blah…one name drop after another. Keep it up, you’re looking more like a buffoon every day.

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  9. In the early 80’s I worked for a software house that wrote vertical apps on the Oasis operating system, which was a proprietary OS and hardware.

    The owner was one of the first resellers for Oasis. He told me the following and he believed it to be true.

    Oasis was approached to convert their OS (which was full multi-user, BTW) from 8-bit to 16-bit. They tried, but couldn’t do it.

    IBM then approached a tiny company called Microsoft about an OS…

    Like

  10. In the early 80’s I worked for a software house that wrote vertical apps on the Oasis operating system, which was a proprietary OS and hardware.

    The owner was one of the first resellers for Oasis. He told me the following and he believed it to be true.

    Oasis was approached to convert their OS (which was full multi-user, BTW) from 8-bit to 16-bit. They tried, but couldn’t do it.

    IBM then approached a tiny company called Microsoft about an OS…

    Like

  11. Self important: if you don’t find my dreck interesting, why are you here? Or, even better, why don’t you do your own blog and show us all how it’s done? I’d link to you and even drop YOUR name as someone who “schooled” me.

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  12. Self important: if you don’t find my dreck interesting, why are you here? Or, even better, why don’t you do your own blog and show us all how it’s done? I’d link to you and even drop YOUR name as someone who “schooled” me.

    Like

  13. Fascinating stuff.
    I thoroughly enjoy your blog, as it gives me an insight into a world I know nothing about. I do have my own blog, but thus far it says nothing of interest to the majority of readers, but as you say, you have to start somewhere, and I will just keep at it, as I enjoy it even if no-one else does. 🙂
    Congrats and Good luck with your new venture Robert, and I will be watching with interest as always.

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  14. Fascinating stuff.
    I thoroughly enjoy your blog, as it gives me an insight into a world I know nothing about. I do have my own blog, but thus far it says nothing of interest to the majority of readers, but as you say, you have to start somewhere, and I will just keep at it, as I enjoy it even if no-one else does. 🙂
    Congrats and Good luck with your new venture Robert, and I will be watching with interest as always.

    Like

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