Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates

philip.greenspun.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

21–30 of 34 posts

Re: How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates

#21

Post by [deleted] »

jhaitsma wrote: post #11
TomOfTTB wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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 -…

[deleted]

Re: How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates

#22

Post by jambalaya »

frisco wrote: post #5
TomOfTTB wrote: post #3

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 af…

> 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…

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

Re: How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates

#23

Post by tome »

patrickg-zill wrote: post #9
frisco wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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.

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.

Re: How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates

#25

Post by eru »

aneesh wrote: post #16
TomOfTTB wrote: post #3

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 af…

> 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.

Re: How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates

#26

Post by frisco »

TomOfTTB wrote: post #7
frisco wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

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…

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.

Re: How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates

#27

Post by anamax »

pg wrote: post #20
bonsaitree wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True, but Google wouldn't have even been launchable without his family's connections to Sun Microsystems founder Andy Bechtolsheim and his $100k angel investment. Mark Zuckerberg is a more apt comparison. With all of the money and privilege he had growing up, he'd better be changing the world.

Neither had family connections to Bechtolsheim that I know of. Where did you hear that?

Stanford CS "family".

Without knowing the story (but knowing some of the players), I'd guess that David Cheriton is also involved.

Re: How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates

#28

Post by wallflower »

wallflower wrote: post #14

My favorite BillG story (told by the CEO of a startup I worked for - and just found the real version via Google). Yes, it is a standard business koan (e.g. why would I fire you because we just spend X amount educating you) but can you imagine any average CEOs doing that? "What are the greatest business lessons Bill has taught you over the years? Very early in my career at Microsoft, around February 1984, we found a d…

And, if you harbor doubts about Bill Gates' technical ability:

My First BillG Review by Joel Spolsky

"He was flipping through the spec! [Calm down, what are you a little girl?]

... and THERE WERE NOTES IN ALL THE MARGINS. ON EVERY PAGE OF THE SPEC. HE HAD READ THE WHOLE GODDAMNED THING AND WRITTEN NOTES IN THE MARGINS.

He Read The Whole Thing! [OMG SQUEEE!]

The questions got harder and more detailed."

http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html

There is a nice little koan about technical management in that essay too: "he just wants to make sure .."

* Note - submitted this last night but should have put it in the original comment - my submissions auto-bury themselves.

Re: How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates

#29

Post by krschultz »

mattmaroon wrote: post #12
krschultz wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anyone is a lofty standard. Some is true, but you don't hear about the super smart guy who worked really hard but for some reason or another luck didn't go his way and then he had no safety net to fall on. I can take risks because although my parents aren't leaving me a trust fund, if shit REALLY hit the fan, I could always move in with them instead of starving in the streets. If you have nobody to lean on, risks see…

I actually know a lot of people who did that. They all got by. America at least is a very easy place if you're smart and hard working. That is not true in many parts of the world unfortunately.

A lot of people is still not anyone. I know several people on the other side of the coin who were incredibly smart and ambitious and resourceful and failed, with no one to fall back on, and now have some serious problems in their life. There is no doubt these guys would have bounced back a lot more easily if they had a trust fund to lean on.

Re: How to Become As Rich As Bill Gates

#30

Post by mattmaroon »

krschultz wrote: post #29
mattmaroon wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I actually know a lot of people who did that. They all got by. America at least is a very easy place if you're smart and hard working. That is not true in many parts of the world unfortunately.

A lot of people is still not anyone. I know several people on the other side of the coin who were incredibly smart and ambitious and resourceful and failed, with no one to fall back on, and now have some serious problems in their life. There is no doubt these guys would have bounced back a lot more easily if they had a trust fund to lean on.

I don't think anyone would claim that a trust fund is a disadvantage. But if the people you know are really smart, ambitious, and resourceful, then give them time. They're still just in process.
Post reply on HN