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Interview with Bill Gates (1995)

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Re: Interview with Bill Gates (1995)

#11

Post by halo »

There's some sensationalism in the editorialising around this piece, but I find it hard to argue with the core of what Gates is saying.

You're not going to be able to sell a piece of software based on the idea that it has less bugs. People expect software to be bug-free. When people buy a new version of a product, people expect new features. I mean, history has proven him completely correct - today, vendors provide free updates in their software to fix bugs and sell new versions with more features.

Secondly, you're always going to have bugs. It's inevitable. What's important is that your software, both in terms of design and testing, is resilient enough to avoid major bugs that a large proportion of people will run into. Historically, Microsoft were good at this - there's a reason they were behind "Writing Solid Code". What remains are bugs which are quirks and corner cases, which are generally less important and are harder to test for. Of course, the situation with security is rather different, as certain quirks and corner cases can have serious unintended repercussions.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates (1995)

#12

Post by aneesh »

wyday wrote: post #9
bayareaguy wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At the bottom of the page it says: Text for this page is extracted from the RISKS archive: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/17.44.html&#62 ; This is the raw interview transcript (from which the magazine article was transcribed in German) kindly provided by the interviewer, Dr. Jürgen Scriba. The introductory text at the top is from Klaus Brunnstein, as found in " rel="nofollow">http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/17.43.html…

I saw that too. But the question still stands. Is this real?

I don't think it is real. I've listened to Gates speak several times, and this piece sounds nothing like him.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates (1995)

#13

Post by bayareaguy »

aneesh wrote: post #12
wyday wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw that too. But the question still stands. Is this real?

I don't think it is real. I've listened to Gates speak several times, and this piece sounds nothing like him.

I'm sure he wouldn't talk that way in a controlled presentation, but I believe it's likely that he could have answered that way in an interview back in 1995 in part because of his nature and the reasoning behind the statements.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates (1995)

#16

Post by thwarted »

halo wrote: post #11

There's some sensationalism in the editorialising around this piece, but I find it hard to argue with the core of what Gates is saying. You're not going to be able to sell a piece of software based on the idea that it has less bugs. People expect software to be bug-free. When people buy a new version of a product, people expect new features. I mean, history has proven him completely correct - today, vendors provide f…

I think it's worth making a distinction between "buying" a new version and "obtaining" a new version (where "buying" includes software that is charged for, even if you pirate it and don't pay for it). That is, the difference is between proprietary software and open source software.

When I pay money for software, I expect new features. When I go to download open source software, 9 times out of 10 I want the specific bug I'm dealing with to be fixed (and often it is). Heh, and often the bug I want fixed is that the software is lacking a certain feature -- but I've seen a lot of "issues" and "bug reports" listing feature requests, so the feature gets treated like a bug. Proprietary software is marketed in such a way that the latest version is all that you'll ever need, rarely are its deficiencies mentioned, and they definitely won't be mentioned as actionable "bugs".

Re: Interview with Bill Gates (1995)

#17

Post by thwarted »

bayareaguy wrote: post #13
aneesh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is real. I've listened to Gates speak several times, and this piece sounds nothing like him.

I'm sure he wouldn't talk that way in a controlled presentation, but I believe it's likely that he could have answered that way in an interview back in 1995 in part because of his nature and the reasoning behind the statements.

I thought this was going to be a new interview, but I remember reading this interview and discussing it at work back in the 90s. I know, this anecdote doesn't really give this much of an air of legitimacy, but archive.org does confirm that it's been around that long (which of course validates my memory more so than if Bill Gates actually said this stuff).

Re: Interview with Bill Gates (1995)

#18

Post by ahoyhere »

aneesh wrote: post #12
wyday wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I saw that too. But the question still stands. Is this real?

I don't think it is real. I've listened to Gates speak several times, and this piece sounds nothing like him.

I was going to say the same thing. I think it's faked.

"No!" "No!" "No!" "Did you ever think of that?"

Bill Gates is many things but a petulant 3-year-old he is not.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates (1995)

#19

Post by ahoyhere »

bayareaguy wrote: post #13
aneesh wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think it is real. I've listened to Gates speak several times, and this piece sounds nothing like him.

I'm sure he wouldn't talk that way in a controlled presentation, but I believe it's likely that he could have answered that way in an interview back in 1995 in part because of his nature and the reasoning behind the statements.

He'd been in business for an awfully long time already in 1995. Where's the evidence to suggest he was so ridiculously unpolished after all those years?

Nobody says "No! No! No!" to an interviewer over and over again.

Re: Interview with Bill Gates (1995)

#20

Post by arrrg »

wyday wrote: post #3

Is this actually real? I couldn't find anything on the Focus Magazine website.

It’s real. Here’s the article in Focus’s archive (German): http://www.focus.de/wissen/wissenschaft/forschung-und-techni... (quite easy to find, actually)

Interview and transcript are not exactly the same. The transcript sounds more like, well, a transcript, the published interview is a lot smoother. Since all printed interviews are highly artificial products this is certainly to be expected. The transcript really seems to be the raw transcript. Even if it isn’t – the content is the same, the printed interview only sounds nicer.

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