Jobs vs. Gates: Who's the Real Star?

I haven't read the article, but I'll always hold Bill Gates to be a "star" for his ability to forge a company that was consistently able to produce software that basically worked (as in didn't seg/protection fault). I've long said that was a secret of their success, e.g. part of how they beat all of their Office competitors but WordPerfect during the transition to Windows.

It makes a difference when your CEO is a serious programmer (how many of us could rewrite an 8080 assembly BASIC interpreter on a long plane ride without the benefit of a computer?). Far too many companies in the '80s and beyond (the period I started following) came out with one working product and then basically lost their ability to write software, often by burning out or otherwise not retaining their key programmers (Lotus is a classic example).

I'll bet a lot of you young whippersnappers who are using safe languages (e.g. not C/C++) and one or a very few small teams don't know from harsh experience how fragile a software based enterprise can be. Fast CPUs that can easily afford the overhead required for safety and the tremendous leverage of today's Internet enhanced development environment (that e.g. allows the building of huge libraries like CPAN) have given you fantastic advantages, which you are making the most of.

OK, having read the article it's not even vaguely fair since their paths with and roles in their respective companies are not at all alike. Jobs is still rebuilding Apple after his return and his role in the company is a lot more central than Gates, who it sounds like after a certain point made sure the key people design people had a clue (http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html) but then left a lot more details to them.

Plus as the author acknowledges Jobs may be making anonymous donations, which I'll note are by definition less well tracked than the prominently named ones and that have also been the style of many in the past. E.g. the bulk of the money necessary to relocate MIT to its "new" campus before and during WWI was anonymously donated by George Eastman (Kodak). We might be surprised someday to learn that Jobs has been making significant donations, or perhaps he'll move into that mode later ... or perhaps he's sufficiently concerned about his health that he's focusing everything on Apple and his family and if he passes away he will leave it to his wife to do the philanthropic phase.