Flight Simulator was developed outside Microsoft, but within Microsoft you could only be referring to Alan Boyd. I received a similar tour.
I'm sure you heard what you thought you heard, arrogance and all, but iirc it was backslash because IBM insisted the slash be the switch character. Anybody remember $SWITCHAR
I know Flight Simulator was originally developed outside MS and I think my tour wasn't that long after MS acquired it.
It's too long ago for me to associate the name 'Alan Boyd' with the person in question but I do remember that he had a loud, penetrating self-assured voice. (Incidentally, he spent considerable time demonstrating Flight Simulator's new features).
You're right, IBM was a large part of the discussion as back then it was the principal client for MSDOS. However, I came away from the visit with the understanding that MS was in full agreement with IBM's decision despite MS's dabblings with Unix.
I had a particular interest at the time as I had a S-100 Godbout CompuPro computer, and in addition to CP/M, I ended up putting Seattle Computer Products' DOS (SB86 from Lifeboat Associates) on it which meant that I had compatibility with MSDOS.
I can understand why MS would have wanted to differentiate MSDOS and the backslash being one way, what I'm still not clear about is why IBM would have wanted to make such a distinction.
Re $SWITCHAR, very vaguely, but from my point it added confusion. Like some other commands its implementation and architecture appeared to be the result of afterthought rather than good design. I've forgotten much of that stuff.
I'm sure you heard what you thought you heard, arrogance and all, but iirc it was backslash because IBM insisted the slash be the switch character. Anybody remember $SWITCHAR