Bill Gates had access to advanced technologies in high school only 0.001% of other students would have.
Bill Gates had direct access to people only 0.001% of his peers would(and I’m no doubt being generous to Bill Gates here).
Bill Gates was a smart kid no doubt, but his environment accounts for most of his success.
They cold-called the New Mexico company to push their non-existent BASIC interpreter. Bill took a leave of absence from Harvard and the microcomputer software business took off with the help of Harvard's computer resources.
see https://archive.org/details/197501PopularElectronics/page/n2...
You don't sink the shots that you never shoot - Bill Gates saw an opportunity and took a big shot from downtown.
But that was in 1975. He's made more shots than not since then.
It's easy to "take a big shot" when you have all the support in the world.
Environment matters a tremendous amount. In common scientific terms, there is almost nothing that is not environment. DNA, development, parenting, personality can all be framed as environmentally derived.
Sometimes these factors come together to give people huge advantages, both in situation and support, but also talent, knowledge, and personality.
I think the lesson we should take away from this is the importance of good environmental influences in producing good outcomes.
I wouldn’t argue that Bill Gates was a good outcome.
The world needs more Bill Joys.