Thread by @stevesi

Telling the Untold Story in "Hardcore Software" (inside the rise and fall of the PC revolution) tells the story of Microsoft's famous pivot to the Internet. Writing on @substack draws out fun stories from a community of readers adding even more. Example: …rdcoresoftware.learningbyshipping.com/p/029-telling-…

2/ Shared the behind the scenes details of a cover story in July '96 BusinessWeek magazine giving a timeline of events leading to Microsoft's big bet on open internet technologies (aka "embrace and extend"). Story opened with this quote from the employee newsletter, _MicroNews_.

3/ I got a note from former Microsoftie Dean Ballard, former developer on the TrueType team (and among other things named Trebuchet typeface). Turns out DeanBal authored "Battle Hymn" which he documents here including a fun series of MicroNews letters. deanbal.net/hymn/hymn.htm

4/ Originally the letter appeared uncredited, thus when it was put in the BusinessWeek coverstory it was "anonymous". This led Dean to author the following letter to the editor.

5/ Then the following week (this was a weekly old school printed newsletter) the following rebuttal was printed.

6/ Then finally, two weeks later, three more letters were published praising the original work and a final letter from Dean with a note that maybe the MicroNews was part of a more elaborate scheme :-)

So please subscribe to hardcoresoftware.substack.com, it is great fun. // END

PS/ The full text of the BusinessWeek story is subscriber only but a few places have the text online including jrichardstevens.com/articles/Rebel…

@substackinc of course in the first tweet. sorry 🙏