>>Actually, I think that he and Paul had completed it (the Altair tape BASIC).
>>
>>He's never hidden his love for the language. More than ten years ago I read an article/interview where he said that BASIC was going to be the common macro language for all Microsoft applications. That was long before VB and before MS bought Fox.
>
>And that is totally cool. VB is a very good language - and at least - MS has established a standard - which is good for all of us.

I'll give Bill credit for a lot of foresight here. After all, the "A" in BASIC stands for "All-Purpose". And he saw how it could be applied beyond the realm of a development tool. He also saw the advantage in having a single language for designing macros. Something that Lotus didn't see through 1-2-3 Release 5 and AmiPro 3.1.

BTW, I don't mean to cross-link threads here, but dare you tell those folks on that other forum that the "B" in BASIC still stands for "Beginners". (rhg)