Bill Gates remembers his early programming career

Bill Gates reflects, in detail, on his early programming career. From a 2010 interview with the Academy of Achievement.

[thecease]

The media makes it seem like he just dropped out and became a billionaire. I like hearing about the whole background and story.

[manojuppala]

This is one of the few videos where bill gates talks about programming rather than philanthropy. Enjoyed it.

[dimensional]

man, not only did he have to learn how to make a payroll system at 15 but he also had to learn how taxes worked at multiple levels to make the system work as needed. that's some crazy stuff

[dave]

Hearing about Bill Gates writing normal applications in his early career is inspiring. He wasn't JUST a genius who wrote machine code and built Windows on his first day as a software developer. He went through the same grimy steps as the rest of us.

[tom.in.barcelona]

imagine being there in 1971 and seeing the first microchip ad. and KNOWING how significant it would be. mindblowing.

[neosapien]

Remember, dropping out of school/college only works if you have brains.

[ExtremelyTastyBread]

everytime he says "Paul Allen" I want to see his business card for some reason

[TheBigdan]

School: “We need to create something called software.”

Bill Gates: “Hold my chocolate milk!”

[binzsta]

Bill Gates probably don't remember this but I'm his lost son. It's never too late to catch up on lost times Daddy!!!

[MrXperx]

Bill should take a look at the youtube recommendation algorithm. It's generally is shit but once in a while, it throws up gems like this.

[fltiejg]

His story needs to be made into a movie... just incredible.

[aja]

I can't write 10 lines without StackOverflow and these guys wrote a payroll software in 80's.

[mariagarcia]

Very interesting. Success born from a passion. As a kid he was working on projects most developers don’t even manage as adults. So at an early age he created a high level understanding of negotiation, project management, coding, what value automation adds to daily corporate life and how to implement it.
A lot of times you see these parents going crazy having kids in a million activities and they miss what the kid was really interested in. Looks like he was encouraged and coach very early on to follow his passion.

[azzajohnson]

I wish he named the phenomenal programmer that picked apart his work in a very constructive way.

[AngkarYearZero]

His brain is crazy. He spent decades running and building Microsoft and can remember the details of work he did before Microsoft. Most people can't remember what they did the previous week.

[beefjezos]

Imagine being Bill Gates' partner and being destined for glory but dying in a rock climbing accident while you're still in high school...

[rajath]

He did all this between the age of 15-17..OMFG... Epicness

[subhajitchakraborty]

Remember he told at age 13-17 he started programming. I am 27 now, when I was 13 I had never seen one until I started engineering at age 19. That's sad about us that when we start exploring, we don't have resources, but definitely I will make sure my kids gets all the facilities which I didn't had during my childhood days.

[JustTheWeirdCinema]

It's really amazing hearing his story. I was so interested in programming during age 13-17, and I volunteered to make about 3 programs each taking over 1 month to make (1 was a cross words games, 2 were function graphics drawing software) under the goal that people from the government would notice it and maybe give me a hand in pursuing a career in programming.
But being Syrian in Saudia Arabia. They literally did not care. The promised they would come, and came to see it (sent 2 people who just said good job) then promised me to show this to people would would appreciate it and help. But after over a year of waiting. I finished high-school and left for collage.


I ended up working online for a nice guy, and after awhile he left due to my inexperience with mistakes and bugs. that demoralized me, and I found not much people to explain some of the more complex stuff.

They came to the school with an entire delegation of people, and made a big celebration with big gifts and stuff. Yet that was for the Football team, who didn't win anything, they just won in the school contest.

No I hardly have any interest in programming anymore. But I learned a lot on my own. Hopefully would find sometime to go back to it.


Edit: I just felt that I could share this here. Thank you for reading if you did.

[easilyCoded]

Who else is still at “Hello world” level ? 😂 ... don’t give up, one day we shall tell our story like this 😎