[1986] Interview with Bill Gates

"GATES: Before I sit down to code something, most of the instructions have already run through my head. It’s not all laid out perfectly, and I do find myself making changes, but all the good ideas have occurred to me before I actually write the program. And if there is a bug in the thing, I feel pretty bad, because if there’s one bug, it says your mental simulation is imperfect. And once your mental simulation is imperfect, there might be thousands of bugs in the program. I really hate it when I watch some people program and I don’t see them thinking."

"INTERVIEWER: Does accumulating experience through the years necessarily make programming easier? GATES: No. I think after the first three or four years, it’s pretty cast in concrete whether you’re a good programmer or not. ... There’s no one at Microsoft who was just kind of mediocre for a couple of years, and then just out of the blue started optimizing everything in sight. I can talk to somebody about a program that he’s written and know right away whether he’s really a good programmer. If he’s really good, he’ll have everything at the tip of his tongue. ... To this day, I can go to the blackboard and write out huge slabs of source code from the Microsoft BASIC that I wrote ten years ago."

Think he still holds this sentiment today about what makes a good programmer?