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The Forth and the Fifth Computer Generation

According to Tanenbaum, large-scale integration circuits marked the beginning of the 4th computer generation; as a result, computers became inexpensive and small enough to be sold to individuals (Tanenbaum 11). Thus, during the mid-70s, computers became the subject of hobbyists, who bought the MIPS Altair kit or built their own computers from other components (Turkle Life on the Screen 31-33). Amongst these self-built computers was the Apple I,  which led to the rise of Apple Computer (Malone 57-68).¹⁸ In contrast to those early microcomputers, the successor of the Apple I, the Apple II, came in a case that shielded users from the hardware (126-131). Moreover, pre-built applications such as VisiCalc were available on the market (160-162); users were no longer required to be able to program (Tanenbaum 11).
Another company that benefitted from the beginning of personal computing was Micro-Soft, later renamed Microsoft (Ebeling 78).¹⁹ Since the Altair came without software, it was a rather useless machine; only those programmers who were able to feed the computer with machine code could use it (Ichbiah 42-43). Microsoft managed to write a BASIC, an interpreter of a high-level programming language, for the Altair, making it programable for the average programmer (Ichbiah 44-50).
Nevertheless, according to Tanenbaum, the 4th computer generation begins no earlier than 1981 when IBM introduced the first IBM PC, although other microcomputers such as the Apple II existed before that time (11). The first IBM PC came with the Microsoft Disk Operating System  (MS-DOS),  a system which was more or less compatible to the then popular CP/M  (315-316).²⁰ CP/M was a UNIX-like operating system that was controlled in a command shell like all other systems available to average users on the market at that time (316). Some systems, especially larger ones, made use of menus which became the standard for programs intended to be operated by non-computer specialists (Walker 442).
While other companies like Atari, Sinclair, or Commodore failed to survive on the computer market, the open architecture of the IBM PC gave rise to IBM clone manufacturers like Compaq,  helping the IBM PC  and compatible machines to become the most successful platform of the 80s and 90s (317). C and the object-oriented programming language C++ were the most popular programming languages, apart from languages from the Pascal family like Modula-2 and the object-oriented Modula-3 (Bauknecht and Zehndert 166).²¹ In addition, languages dealing with databases such as SQL (Structured Query Language) are characteristic of this computer generation.
Networked and decentralized computer systems are often regarded as the 5th computer generation (Rucker Dinosauriermaschinen und die Lust am Hacken), while other computer scientists consider them as a development within the 4th generation (Tanenbaum 11).

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