Monte Davidoff (; born 1956) is an American

computer programmer A computer programmer, sometimes referred to as a software developer, a software engineer, a programmer or a coder, is a person who creates computer programs — often for larger computer software. A programmer is someone who writes/create ...

. Davidoff is from

Glendale, Wisconsin Glendale is a city in Milwaukee County, Wisconsin, United States. It is a suburb of the neighboring Milwaukee. The population was 13,357 at the 2020 census. Geography Glendale is located at (43.130060, −87.927719). According to the United ...

. He graduated from Nicolet High School in 1974, and went on to

Harvard College Harvard College is the undergraduate college of Harvard University, an Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636, Harvard College is the original school of Harvard University, the oldest institution of higher lea ...

, where he majored in

applied mathematics Applied mathematics is the application of mathematical methods by different fields such as physics, engineering, medicine, biology, finance, business, computer science, and industry. Thus, applied mathematics is a combination of mathematical ...

, the department at Harvard that, at the time, included

computer science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to practical disciplines (includin ...

. Davidoff also worked at

WHRB WHRB is a commercial FM radio station in Cambridge, Massachusetts. It broadcasts at 95.3 MHz and is operated by students at Harvard College. The station is owned by Harvard Radio Broadcasting Co., Inc., a non-profit corporation independent of ...

, the college radio station, and graduated from Harvard in 1978. A college dormmate of

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...

who had a summer job at Gates's new company

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washi ...

during college, Davidoff is best known for writing the

Microsoft Binary Format In computing, Microsoft Binary Format (MBF) is a format for floating-point numbers which was used in Microsoft's BASIC language products, including MBASIC, GW-BASIC and QuickBASIC prior to version 4.00. There are two main versions of the for ...

floating-point arithmetic In computing, floating-point arithmetic (FP) is arithmetic that represents real numbers approximately, using an integer with a fixed precision, called the significand, scaled by an integer exponent of a fixed base. For example, 12.345 can be r ...

routines for

Altair BASIC Altair BASIC is a discontinued interpreter for the BASIC programming language that ran on the MITS Altair 8800 and subsequent S-100 bus computers. It was Microsoft's first product (as Micro-Soft), distributed by MITS under a contract. Altair BA ...

while he was at Harvard. The routines were subsequently reused in

Microsoft BASIC Microsoft BASIC is the foundation software product of the Microsoft company and evolved into a line of BASIC interpreters and compiler(s) adapted for many different microcomputers. It first appeared in 1975 as Altair BASIC, which was the first ve ...

products for other systems. He later worked at

Honeywell Information Systems Honeywell International Inc. is an American publicly traded, multinational conglomerate corporation headquartered in Charlotte, North Carolina. It primarily operates in four areas of business: aerospace, building technologies, performance ma ...

on the

Multics Multics ("Multiplexed Information and Computing Service") is an influential early time-sharing operating system based on the concept of a single-level memory.Dennis M. Ritchie, "The Evolution of the Unix Time-sharing System", Communications of t ...

project,

Tandem Computers Tandem Computers, Inc. was the dominant manufacturer of fault-tolerant computer systems for ATM networks, banks, stock exchanges, telephone switching centers, and other similar commercial transaction processing applications requiring maximum up ...

, Ready Systems, and

Stratus Computer Stratus Technologies, Inc. is a major producer of fault tolerant computer servers and software. The company was founded in 1980 as Stratus Computer, Inc. in Natick, Massachusetts, and adopted its present name in 1999. The current CEO and preside ...

. Since 2000 he has consulted through his own company, Alluvial Software.

References

External links

Alluvial Software2001 Interview with Davidoff
in ''

The Register ''The Register'' is a British technology news website co-founded in 1994 by Mike Magee, John Lettice and Ross Alderson. The online newspaper's masthead sublogo is "''Biting the hand that feeds IT''." Their primary focus is information tech ...

''
2022 Interview with Davidoff
in the
Floppy Days Vintage Computing Podcast
' 1956 births Living people People from Glendale, Wisconsin American computer programmers Harvard College alumni Multics people {{US-compu-bio-stub

See also

References

External links