Bill Gates remembers his early programming career

Programming is where you're describing to the machine how to do something and so telling it how to play tic-tac-toe Telling it how to play the game board game Monopoly telling it how to convert numbers from one base to another and The idea of okay, there's these simple instructions, but if you put them together Then you can synthesize something quite complex It's a fascinating kind of mathematical thing. How can you make it fast? How can you make it small and I went through several phases of doing more complex programs where people who were great programmers would look at my work give me feedback on it and you know you get so you You're you can be quite a good programmer, and it was kind of a such a intense activity Between the age of 13 and 17 That you know we learned a lot eventually one of the programs we took on was the idea of the scheduling of Our school when should the classes meet who should be in which section say how all these requests for? People who want different classes and keeping them small and not having the teachers teach too many classes in a row Very complex kind of software problem and actually when the school first asked me to do it when I was 15 I Said that I didn't know how and they asked some adults to do it and that didn't work And then about a year later. I'd figured out how to do it and so my friends And I actually did the software that did all this high school scheduling It had some fantastic Benefits to us and we got paid for doing it. It was exactly the kind of complex problem that Developed my skills very well, and you know we got some degree of control over who is in our classes and So you know it combined the best of everything initially when that teletype showed up there were probably 20 kids who sort of showed an interest and It was confusing enough that it got winnowed down to about eight or nine fairly quickly who were quite serious about it and then there were about four of us who were hyper serious, you know kind of doing it day and night and Two of them were two years older than I was and one I was my same age Now in a high school people are two years ahead of you. You know they don't socialize with the young kids all that much So the idea that we had this group of four of us. You know it's kind of unusual. We called it the lakeside programming group and one of the companies we'd been doing work for Went bankrupt the one in Seattle, and so we went to one in Portland, Oregon computer center corporation C cubed Which had been in the University District in Seattle, and we'd spent a lot of time there, and they were wonderful to us They weren't a well-run business, so they went bankrupt so this company down in Portland, Oregon Said hey, we're not just gonna give you computer time you have to do something so we agreed to write this payroll program and A payroll program is surprisingly complicated. There's all these taxes and reports and things at the state level and federal level anyway They said well if you could write one of those we'd at least give you free computer time and so I negotiated that deal and the two older members Paul Allen and Rick said well You know this is there's not enough work to go around so we're gonna take charge of this and I said okay You know I'm not that interested because I had in mind how I wanted to do the payroll program and so they They messed around for about three months didn't get much done And then said well you join back up, and I said okay, but you know if so I'm in charge of this and You know it's gonna kind of set a precedent for future activities, but they said no no that's fine and so We worked we actually finished this payroll program. It was a lot of work The friend who was my age? Kent Evans, and I ended up doing the lion's share of the work now tragically right as he and I finished that he was killed in a mountain climbing accident and So then there were there were just three of us left who'd been extremely involved including Paul Allen Who was the one who was reading the magazines even more than I was and he was the one who Actually saw this computer on a chip so-called microprocessor in a very small obscure article, but he Saw that it would be deeply important and brought that to me in 1971 so we were Still 15 I was 15 and he was 17 At the time so these CQ people have this computer, which is a time-sharing computer, and they're letting us come in at night and They had this deal with the company who made the computer digital equipment Corporation that they had this acceptance period if they could find problems with it They could delay their rental payments And so they thought of us as kind of monkeys that might find some problems and help them delay their rental payments Well out that was a fair Analysis because at first we were just completely goofing around like we'd have Try to run hundreds of jobs at the same time or have all the jobs try and grab The same resources to see if we could get the system to fail and we did in kind of this brute force approach And so that they would report that as a problem and delay their rental payment Well as a few months went by actually about four months by the end of it We had gotten very Sophisticated in fact we've gotten the source code of the operating system out of the garbage can and we're reading it and The kind of problems we were finding were far more subtle. In fact, we'd not only find the problem We'd look and we'd suggest how they might fix it Anyway, digital equipment got so tired of this. They said look you got to pay you're gonna be able to find problems These these kinds of problems forever, but we need to get paid and so then there was a question whether they would let us stay there or not and It was pretty tenuous And so Paul and I you know, we understood the system well enough that we could look at all the passwords of the dairy various accounts and so, you know, we could use literally any account and And Then people when they found out we've done that they got kind of mad about that They weren't sure how mad they should be about it because we hadn't really caused any damage But you know, it wasn't a good thing, you know computer hacking was literally just being invented at the time and So fortunately we got off with a bit of a warning, but there actually was a period That because of that they said we weren't supposed to use the computer and it was over a summer and Paul actually went up to the University of Washington and found ways to use the computer And get connected up And he took a while before he told me and then eventually he told me about that. We got we got back on I was really quite serious about math at the time and Various science things Paul had actually read more science fiction than I had bite. I mean by a lot And so he and I would talk about that, but I had plenty of things it was not Wasn't some great tragedy, but then we got you know pulled back in then that company went bankrupt and then we had the work for this Portland company on the payroll program and then we had the Scheduling program and so, you know, we were lucky there were always kind of things that not only gave us an opportunity, but exposed us To that next level, you know after the payroll program then there was a Computer project to use computers to control all the electricity grid in the dams of the Pacific Northwest It's a government agent called Bonneville power had done a contract with a company called TRW to use computers to do all this control and TRW had committed to do all this really high reliability great software work well, they found it more difficult than they expected and so they Were looking for people who understood They these kinds of computers which Paul and I Paul Allen and I had done a lot of work on these was the same computer that was a computer center corporation and at this Portland company information sciences anyway, so they They we were kind of famous But nobody had met us because we'd filed these problem reports and by the end of these problem reports We they were so sophisticated was like who are these guys, you know out in Seattle telling us how to fix all this stuff And so when TRW is saying hey, we're desperate find us They're telling digital equipment who makes these things find us the best programmers and somebody says well There's Gates and Allen and somebody says well, nobody's really met them. But yeah, but they're really good You know, we got to be able to track them down so they find us this one guy and we go for an interview and they you know, these two kids show up and That was I when I was interviewed. I was 16 When they interviewed me so they're like, well we can't hire for you But you know, then they talked to us about software and we clearly know a lot and when you're young and you know a lot People don't have any kind of intermediate thing You're either, you know what you're supposed to be which is a kid doesn't know that much or they think whoa What you know, this guy's the limit. Well, we were pretty good programmers But anyway, so we got jobs at this TRW and that exposed me to some programmers Who are way better than I was who critiqued my work. I Could look at their work and this one guy Was really a phenomenal programmer and he would just take my stuff and rip it apart You know in this super constructive way. Anyway, it was it was a brilliant thing and and so part of my senior year And the summer before and after the senior year Paul and I were down in Vancouver Washington Working on this project. So it kind of took our understanding to a whole new level and it exposed us to a bunch of People there and in a Paul the whole time Ever since he'd seen that Michael Prowse article was saying, you know, there's an opportunity here. This is going to be big You know, we ought to think what we're gonna do about this. So we kept kept talking about that