#16: Bill Gates, Source Code
Apr. 28th, 2025 11:24 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
kareila posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
kareila_booksThis is a very well-written, unflinching memoir of the author's early years, starting from birth and ending as the nascent Microsoft company moves its headquarters from Albuquerque to Seattle.
The first half of the book covers his upbringing, and two things are immediately clear. One is that he was on the autism spectrum, which he acknowledges in the book's epilogue ("If I were growing up today...") The other is that he was immensely privileged, both by the choices made and opportunities afforded by his parents, and also in having access as a young teenager to some of the earliest commercially available computers on which to learn how to program.
The second half of the book describes his early business ventures, which started in high school and continued during his time at Harvard. He reveals that he got in big trouble with school administrators for bringing non-students into the computer lab to work on a non-academic project. He also notes that he originally had every intention of returning to finish his senior year and graduate. I hope his mom wasn't too disappointed that he never did.
I was surprised that the book did not mention his recent decision to release the original Altair BASIC interpreter as open source.
The first half of the book covers his upbringing, and two things are immediately clear. One is that he was on the autism spectrum, which he acknowledges in the book's epilogue ("If I were growing up today...") The other is that he was immensely privileged, both by the choices made and opportunities afforded by his parents, and also in having access as a young teenager to some of the earliest commercially available computers on which to learn how to program.
The second half of the book describes his early business ventures, which started in high school and continued during his time at Harvard. He reveals that he got in big trouble with school administrators for bringing non-students into the computer lab to work on a non-academic project. He also notes that he originally had every intention of returning to finish his senior year and graduate. I hope his mom wasn't too disappointed that he never did.
I was surprised that the book did not mention his recent decision to release the original Altair BASIC interpreter as open source.
