Monte Davidoff (/ˈmɒntiˈdeɪvɪdɒf/; born 1956) is an Americancomputer programmer who was one of the first employees of Microsoft.[1]
Davidoff is fromGlendale, Wisconsin.[1] He graduated fromNicolet High School in 1974. As a high-school student, he developed a deep interest in computers and taught himself to code in different languages and for different computers.[2] He subsequently attendedHarvard College, majoring in mathematics.[2] At that time, Harvard did not have a separate program forcomputer science; students interested in this subject typically majored in (applied) mathematics, physics, or engineering.[3] Davidoff also worked atWHRB, the college radio station, and graduated from Harvard in 1978.
Davidoff was a schoolmate ofBill Gates at Harvard.[1] Gates and his business partner,Paul Allen, met Davidoff while discussing how to write a floating-point algorithm.[2] Impressed with his technical knowledge and experience, Gates and Allen recruited Davidoff, then a freshman, for their new company Micro-Soft. (The hyphen was dropped in 1976.)[1][2] Davidoff was assigned the task of writingfloating-point arithmetic routines forAltair BASIC over the summer, when the three of them lived inAlbuquerque, New Mexico, where their company was then headquartered.[1] Gates, Allen, and Davidoff managed to write the software without ever seeing theAltair 8800 thanks to a simulator.[4] They also spent time at Harvard's Aiken Computation Laboratory coding on thePDP-10 using Gates' account.[3] Their unusually high usage time was spotted by an administrator, who was concerned that it would jeopardize the school's federal funding following an audit.[3] Gates was later admonished for allowing entry to unauthorized individuals, but Davidoff was cleared of any wrongdoing.[5] They finished this project in 1977.[4] Davidoff was responsible for the mathematicalroutines.[6] These routines were subsequently reused inMicrosoft BASIC products for other systems.[7] Thesource code is now available at thePusey Library of Harvard University.[6]
Davidoff returned to Harvard to finish his degree. He later worked atHoneywell Information Systems on theMultics project,Tandem Computers,Ready Systems, andStratus Computer.[4] Since 2000, he has been working as aconsultant through his own company, Alluvial Software, inCupertino, California.[1] Although he facilitated the rise of Microsoft, he later became aLinux user. His favorite programming language isPython.[4]
