@nazokiyoubinbou @eniko "640 K ought to be enough for anybody." — Bill Gates, allegedly
"I've said some stupid things and some wrong things, but not that. No one involved in computers would ever say that a certain amount of memory is enough for all time ... I keep bumping into that silly quotation attributed to me that says 640 K of memory is enough. There's never a citation; the quotation just floats like a rumor, repeated again and again." — Bill Gates, 1996
@kawa @eniko Yeah, lol, I saw that too.
It really does make sense that he wouldn't have said it. I honestly believe him. And, as is pointed out there, there is no actual specific citation of him saying it in a specific place.
But you know, I bet someone, somewhere, was stupid enough to think it. Probably in the days where 64K seemed like a lot. "What about someday years from now when there's ten times that?" "Huh? Who could ever use that much?" 😁
@grapeshot @kawa @eniko I'm not sure how to take that one. It feels like a more full text of whatever he said might be necessary to judge what it really means. For example, if it meant the current memory limitations go away, then that would obviously make sense. Or if it just meant the limitations hindering something specific, then in that context it would make sense.
So honestly I don't really know how to take that.
@grapeshot Ok, I found it. There is indeed a very specific context to that statement. It was a discussion about going from 8-bit processors to 16-bit processors with a megabyte (or possibly more, but he specifically pointed to the 8088.) He was talking specifically about their work in BASIC and how every time they added a new feature it took away the available address space that users would have to work with and how having so much more would effectively eliminate that particular issue.
That's pretty much one specific piece of software at one specific time. Practically one specific version. It would eliminate the problem with that software at that time, not all software for all time.
Really the point he was just making there was "we need to get past 8-bit limitations already."
@grapeshot I don't disagree with any of that of course, but the point is that in this specific context it doesn't really seem to be a statement that having 256KB of RAM would be enough even for five years from then, just that it would be enough for the stuff they were doing with BASIC right then and there.
That's one specific software and it doesn't even seem to have been part of the five years ahead speculation but merely the "why we need to be switching to 16-bit right now instead of staying on 8-bit." He seemed to be focused in that particular question on specifically trying to convince people it was time to start going to a new generation of processors.
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