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Comment by TomOfTTB | Hacker News Reader

I think this is about as accurate an account as you'll get in regards to how Bill Gates made his money.

Yes, his entire family was rich and his parents were well connected (when most people tell the story they leave out "Bill Gates got the call from IBM because his mother was on their board")

Yes he got unbelievably lucky (so much so that he turned down IBM, sent them to the makers of QDOS, and still made the deal after QDOS blew it)

and Yes, he's not a great hacker (he's smart and knows enough about technology but the couple Gen 1 Microsoft employees I've met say he can't code worth a darn)

But even with all that he would have failed if not for his keen business insight and technical accumen. I guess you need both luck and skill to become the richest man in the world (but I'm betting skill can still get you pretty rich)

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> and Yes, he's not a great hacker (he's smart and knows enough about technology but the couple Gen 1 Microsoft employees I've met say he can't code worth a darn)

What? I'm pretty sure Gates is the quintessential technical founder. He wrote the original Altair BASIC implementation himself in something like a week, and snuck into University of Washington's computer labs in the middle of the night in high school. I don't think I've ever seen anything that implied otherwise.

Being able to create something quick that's workable doesn't really indicate that you're a good programmer.

As far as never hearing anything about it, I based the statement on a couple personal accounts. But "Barbarians Led By Bill Gates: Microsoft From The Inside" has an account of at least one programmer calling Gates code terrible. The programmer in question co-wrote the book so you have to take it with a grain of salt but it seems true because the story he tells is one that paints Gates in a positive light (he doesn't fire the guy for calling his code junk right to his face)

One often-overlooked aspect is that for business purposes, the first priority is to have something that gets the job done. Release early and often, then iterate towards perfection - but only for what your customer wants.

This generally means that its not great, but it works. If time permits, it is great to tidy / refactor bad code, but this is not always possible. Reminds me of an item posted a couple of weeks ago - "confessions of a terrible programmer"

Wait. Wait. Backtrack for a second.

The year is 1974, and Linux, Mac, and Windows haven't been invented yet. There is no IDE, no SDK, and no documentation. Actually, there's no development environment at all. There are no APIs, either. Ruby, Python, Java, and friends are till 10 years or more from being invented. And yet, Gates wrote an interpreted language, on his own, in a week. Put differently, Gates wrote a language in a CAVE, with SCRAPS, in a WEEK.

It's easy to think that now we'd just Google it and scrape it together using copypasta if we really needed to. Hell, not only was there not Google, but there was no technical community to ask questions. Don't forget what he was really working with there.

Being able to create something quick that's workable doesn't really indicate that you're a good programmer.

It doesn't?? Then what does? Quick and usable in the business world is practically the holy grail of programming!!!

Ever play the "Gorillas" game in GW-BASIC that shipped with many copies of MS-DOS.

Bill Gates wrote that.

And was proud of it.

Yeah. When I was a kid. Everyone played it and enjoyed it. So what? Donkey.bas on the other hand...

Gorillas.bas? Are you sure? I can't find a reference. In particular Wikipedia makes no mention of it:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GORILLAS.BAS

(It was also QBasic, not GW-BASIC)

Donkey.bas, on the other hand, was co-authored by Gates, according to Wikipedia.

He also set up the class rosters for high school, surrounding himself with all the cute girls.

> and Yes, he's not a great hacker (he's smart and knows enough about technology but the couple Gen 1 Microsoft employees I've met say he can't code worth a darn)

I disagree. I've met & talked with an early Microsoft employee who interacted directly with Gates. He was very impressed with Gates' technical ability, and more importantly, his ability to convert technical knowledge into business advantage.

That's does not seem to contradict.

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