@zaitcev >he wanted to talk about MS BASIC as a pioneering accomplishment.
MS BASIC wasn't a pioneering accomplishment, since as far as I am aware, better BASIC implementations at the time existed.

What MS BASIC accomplished was widespread usage due to sharing of copies, but of course Bill Gates wrote up a letter *complaining* about that, as he didn't receive a payment for every copy made, despite how a copy should have at least been provided to a University for them to share, in exchange for the expensive computer time he used while unauthorized (he was pretending to be a student with a friend at that University, so he could use computer time without having to pay).