Before Windows, There Was Chaos


 

How Bill Gates Made Me Feel Poor — and Then Taught Me What Power Really Is

I was computing in the days before Windows. My first system had a grand total of 20 megabytes on the hard drive. I had the full 640k of RAM, but after DOS loaded, I was left with 512k to actually work with. Most software developers believed Gates when he supposedly said, "640k ought to be enough for anyone." So they built right up to the limit. DOS didn't like that. Programs clashed. Crashed. Locked up.

Then came Windows. Not for me, though.

I couldn’t run it. Not on my 20MB system. And that was the first strike against Gates: he made me feel my relative poverty.

There’s a particular sting when everyone else gets the shiny new thing and you don’t. I wasn’t mad at Windows because it was bad. I was mad because I couldn’t have it. It felt like the tech world was moving on without me.

But I scraped. I saved. And eventually, piece by piece, I built a system that could run Windows.

Then I promptly killed my hard drive with overambitious compression software.

Still, I learned a lot. I learned how fragile these systems were. I learned how hard it was to keep up when you were starting behind. And for a long time, I hated Gates for it. I thought he was just a monopolist with bad instincts and worse empathy.

Then I got to the software part of the equation.

I had been a die-hard WordPerfect fan, and WordPerfect didn’t make the Windows transition gracefully. That, too, seemed like Gates’ fault.

But then I discovered something: the DLL. The Dynamic Link Library.

And suddenly, I understood.

The DLL wasn’t just a clever bit of coding. It was the skeleton key to software standardization. It meant that developers didn’t have to reinvent the wheel every time they wanted to save, open, or print a file. It meant software could be interoperable. It meant that I, with no degree and a DIY machine, could become a Microsoft Office Specialist. I could open a new program and know what to do.

That was the power of standardization.

It was the beginning of understanding that Gates hadn’t made my life harder. He had made it possible.

But here’s the flip side.

I’ve been frustrated for years that the next generation never got a Gates. They got a Zuckerberg. /And Facebook tossed these new users straight into the deep end of the internet, where every app, every feature, every system seemed designed to do its own thing.

Yes, Gates is guilty here too. He spent years trying to make the seam between your desktop and the net disappear. I'm not a fan of that. But at least back then, there was a sense of order. A common interface. A shared understanding.

Now? The wild west is back.

And this time, it brought apps. And web3. And every platform trying to build its own private universe.

There is no standard. No shared language. Everyone's doing whatever the hell they want.

I often reflect that all of us have our own private world tucked between our ears. Language is how we bridge those worlds. Software used to be, too. With standards, we could substitute familiarity for confusion. We could collaborate. We could teach each other. We could communicate.

So thanks, Bill.

You made me feel poor. But eventually, you made me feel powerful.

You showed me that expertise isn’t about gatekeeping — it’s about giving more people the tools to walk through.

Somewhere along the way, the tech industry mistook difference for innovation — and innovation for individualism.

And that’s how we ended up with a million interfaces, a million isolated users, and no shared language.


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