Bill Gates releases the source code for Microsoft's first product, Altair BASIC

In a nutshell: Microsoft, founded by Bill Gates and Paul Allen in April 1975, is celebrating its 50th anniversary this month. To mark the occasion, Gates has released the source code he and Allen wrote for the Altair 8800 – dubbed Altair BASIC – which became the company's first product.

Reminiscing about Microsoft's early days, Gates said Altair BASIC was the company's "original source code," predating iconic products like Windows and Office. While he went on to write plenty of code for Microsoft in the years that followed, Gates holds Altair BASIC especially close to his heart, calling it the "coolest code I've ever written."

He also shared a humorous anecdote about how the code came to be. In the early 1970s, he and Allen reached out to the creators of the Altair 8800, claiming they had already developed a version of the BASIC programming language for the ...