## Intro This is one of my favorite books over the last few years, and one that I can see myself recommending to others for years to come. Bill Gates separated from Microsoft years ago and barely owns any stock in the company, but he's still a household name known for co-founding Microsoft. This book is very much the origin story of Bill. It has vibes similar to the very first Iron Man film, but is grounded in non-fiction and childhood. Even though we grew up under completely different circumstances, at different times, in different countries, around different religions, and with different household incomes, so much of what he said resonated with me. I guess nature—having ADHD and being somewhere on the spectrum—does end up being a key driver in what you do throughout childhood, regardless of where nurture takes you. Bill grew up in an affluent family in the US, around Christianity, in the 1960s/1970s. I grew up in a household with limited resources, immigrating multiple times, in a Jewish community, in the 1990s/2000s. Both of us found books, games, and hobbies to obsess over. We had friends with whom we would dream, outdoor excursions that shaped our experiences, and friendships that came and went. Very different, but familiar throughout. **Living in Seattle as I read this made me think how cool it'd be to go on a hike together. Bill, if you're reading this, it's an open invitation :)** ## Recurring moments I'm writing this review 6–12 months after reading the book. After such a long time, you forget the details, but you remember the vibe. **Bill's friend (Ken)**: Bill wrote at length about his friend who had aspirations bigger than his. Ken would carry a briefcase. They'd share business ideas. They'd go on hikes together. Ken was one of those people who would push himself to the limit in every aspect of life, and it's depressing that he tragically passed away in a hiking accident in his teens. His memory lived on through Bill and inspired me to keep pushing as I read the book in my 30s. **Bill's partner (Allan)**: Everyone knows about Allan, but he always felt like a shadow. It was cool to see light shed on his personality as Bill's older friend who introduced him to new experiences, drugs, and ideas and, over time, became Bill's technical right-hand man. In particular, I love the passage where Allan wrote code by hand on a plane, and it successfully compiled, running on the second attempt during a live demo at one of Microsoft's most critical turning points. **Bill's mom**: As someone who is very close to his mom and very grateful for everything his mom has sacrificed and done for him, I have a lot of respect for Bill's mom. She's a woman I would have loved to meet. She knew the sort of family she wanted to have and the community she wanted to build, and she made it happen. I could tell she was strict, caring, and supportive in equal parts, which is not an easy balance. ## Quotes These are shortened, verbatim excerpts from the book, grouped chronologically. Timestamps, links, metadata, and longer transcript passages are omitted. See the [full raw set of quotes](./2025-12-01-source-code-my-beginnings-raw/). - [Curiosity, School, and Computers](#curiosity-school-and-computers) - [Chapter Six: Free Time](#chapter-six-free-time) - [Recipe Program](#recipe-program) - [Life-Saving Trail](#life-saving-trail) - [Chapter Seven: Just Kids?](#chapter-seven-just-kids) - [Double Textbooks](#double-textbooks) - [Science as a Way of Thinking](#science-as-a-way-of-thinking) - [Dr. Morris's Teachings](#dr-morriss-teachings) - [Appealing Nature of Science](#appealing-nature-of-science) - [Kent's Drive](#kents-drive) - [Lakeside Programming Group](#lakeside-programming-group) - [Taking Charge](#taking-charge) - [UW Computer Science Lab](#uw-computer-science-lab) - [Chapter Eight: The Real World](#chapter-eight-the-real-world) - [Missing Transcript](#missing-transcript) - [Merging Schools](#merging-schools) - [Kent's Climbing Accident](#kents-climbing-accident) - [Kent's Parents' Grief](#kents-parents-grief) - [Remembering Kent's Death](#remembering-kents-death) - [Kent's Influence](#kents-influence-1) - [Paul's Experience](#pauls-experience) - [Intel's 4004 Microprocessor](#intels-4004-microprocessor) - [Chapter Nine: One Act and Five Nines](#chapter-nine-one-act-and-five-nines) - [John Norton's Mariner 1 Error](#john-nortons-mariner-1-error) - [John Norton's Mariner 1 Failure](#john-nortons-mariner-1-failure) - [Acid Trip and Orthodontist](#acid-trip-and-orthodontist) - [Becoming the Best](#becoming-the-best) - [Microsoft and the Making of Bill Gates](#microsoft-and-the-making-of-bill-gates) - [Chapter Ten: Precocious](#chapter-ten-precocious) - [Math 55](#math-55) - [Math 55A](#math-55a) - [John Mather's Early Brilliance](#john-mathers-early-brilliance) - [Aiken Lab's VR History](#aiken-labs-vr-history) - [Flight Simulator](#flight-simulator) - [3D Baseball Game](#3d-baseball-game) - [Harvard's Academic Intimidation](#harvards-academic-intimidation) - [Extreme Study Habits](#extreme-study-habits) - [Organic Chemistry](#organic-chemistry) - [Being Called Precocious](#being-called-precocious) - [Math 55 Disillusionment](#math-55-disillusionment) - [Redefining Self-Identity](#redefining-self-identity) - [DEC Job Offer](#dec-job-offer) - [Declined Job Offers](#declined-job-offers) - [Chapter Eleven: Wild Card](#chapter-eleven-wild-card) - [Recurring Dream](#recurring-dream) - [LSD Thought Experiment](#lsd-thought-experiment) - [Calling MITS](#calling-mits) - [Bootstrap Loader](#bootstrap-loader) - [Chapter Twelve: Be So Correct](#chapter-twelve-be-so-correct) - [Naming Microsoft](#naming-microsoft) - [Chapter Thirteen: Micro-Soft](#chapter-thirteen-micro-soft) - [Homebrew Computer Club's First Glimpse](#homebrew-computer-clubs-first-glimpse) - [Paul Allen's Crucial Role](#paul-allens-crucial-role) - [Rick's courage to come out](#ricks-courage-to-come-out) - [Coding All Day](#coding-all-day) - [Ed Roberts' flawed memory boards](#ed-roberts-flawed-memory-boards) - [Declined Judgeship](#declined-judgeship) - [A Father's Judgeship](#a-fathers-judgeship) - [NCR Deal](#ncr-deal) - [Open Letter to Hobbyists](#open-letter-to-hobbyists) - [First Professional Speech](#first-professional-speech) - [Microsoft's Business Plan](#microsofts-business-plan) - [Chapter Fourteen: Source Code](#chapter-fourteen-source-code) - [Microsoft's Early Sales Efforts](#microsofts-early-sales-efforts) - [Meeting Steve Ballmer](#meeting-steve-ballmer) - [Pertec Acquisition Fallout](#pertec-acquisition-fallout) - [Sam Strum](#sam-strum) - [Cement Plant Road](#cement-plant-road) - [Meeting Steve Jobs](#meeting-steve-jobs) - [Arbitration Show](#arbitration-show) - [Cash Crunch](#cash-crunch) - [Bob Greenberg's Loan](#bob-greenbergs-loan) - [Bill Gates and Ed Roberts](#bill-gates-and-ed-roberts) - [Reconnecting with Ed Roberts](#reconnecting-with-ed-roberts) - [Commodore Basic Easter Egg](#commodore-basic-easter-egg) - [Reflection, Family, and Legacy](#reflection-family-and-legacy) - [Epilogue | End Credits](#epilogue--end-credits) - [Richard Feynman](#richard-feynman) - [Neurodiversity](#neurodiversity) - [Neurodiversity](#neurodiversity-1) - [Parental Support](#parental-support) - [Bill Gates' Mother](#bill-gates-mother) - [Self-Understanding](#self-understanding) #### Family, Childhood, and Foundations #### Opening Credits | Dedication | Epigraph | Prologue ##### Hiking Group > "When I was around 13," ##### Early Hiking Adventures > "When I was around 13, I started hanging out with a group of boys who met up for regular long hikes in the mountains around Seattle. We got to know each other as Boy Scouts." ##### Defining Success > "Like hiking, programming fit me because it allowed me to define my own measure of success, and it seemed limitless, not determined by how fast I could run or how far I could throw. The logic, focus, and stamina needed to write long, complicated programs came naturally to me." ##### Hiking and Coding > "Now we moved only as fast as Chip limped. All the while, I silently honed my code." #### Chapter One: Trey ##### Gammy's Card Games > "I am actually number four, but my dad chose to go by junior, and in turn, I got called Bill Gates III. Gammy started me off at age five with Go Fish." ##### Gammy's House > "Gammy continued to live there after my grandfather died. On some weekends, Christy and I would stay over, alternating who got the privilege of sleeping in Gammy's room." ##### Learning Card Strategy > "She's coaching my sister and me while also playing her own hand. She somehow grasps everything happening at the table and even seems to know the cards we're each holding." ##### Winning at Cards > "Implicit was the idea that if I used my brain, stayed focused, I could figure out the right card to play. I could win." ##### The Moonshot Letter > "We feel very accepted by him since he is including us as passengers on his proposed moonshot, they wrote. I was ahead of Kennedy by a few years." ##### A Mother's Love > "You know, Bill, that if you truly loved me always, I would do anything in the world for you. I love you, Bill." ##### The Maxwell Family Legacy > "He had also served as a mayor, a state legislator, a school board member, and a director of the Federal Reserve. The platform of wealth and opportunity set by JW and furthered by my grandfather, also a banker, meant that my mom would want for nothing as a child." ##### Clarabelle > "My father named his car Clarabelle, which he thought fit its middle-aged persona. Clarabelle brought him freedom, carrying him on dates to football games and on fishing trips." #### Chapter Two: View Ridge ##### Seattle's First Tornado > "My mother ushered us into the basement where we huddled near our stash of canned food and other nuclear attack supplies. In 1962, a bomb seemed far more likely than what did disrupt that Friday evening." ##### Early Awareness > "It didn't fit my mother's image of how the Gates family should present itself. My sister Christy and I, and later Libby, were part of the huge cohort of kids, baby boomers, born in the period of prosperity and optimism that followed World War II." ##### View Ridge Upbringing > "At school, teachers showed us hair-raising films with footage of Hiroshima and mushroom clouds. We practiced duck and cover." ##### The World's Fair Vision > "This exemplifies the spirit of peace and cooperation with which we approach the decades ahead. Days later, my mom put me in a button-down shirt and blue blazer, and with my similarly overdressed family, we set off for Century 21." ##### World's Fair > "Here's how the Hollywood version of my story would go. Entranced by the IBM Pavilion, nearly age seven, I fell in love with computers and never looked back." ##### Techno-Optimism > "Still, the fair's techno-optimistic vision must have affected me. At that impressionable age, the message in 1962 was so clear." ##### Mary Gates' Vision > "I was equally raised by my parents, but it was my mother who set our clocks ahead by eight minutes, so we would be on mom time. From the start, she had a grand vision for our family." ##### Mom Time > "I was equally raised by my parents, but it was my mother who set our clocks ahead by eight minutes, so we would be on mom time. From the start, she had a grand vision for our family." ##### Cheerio Dinner Scheme > "Whatever name you got, Baugh, Berg, Capiloto, Merritt, or one of the others, you had to go to that family's cottage and eat dinner with the parents. Their kids, meanwhile, went to dinner with the parents of whatever name they drew." ##### Cheerio Dinner Guests > "Attorney. One owned a big garden store." #### Chapter Three: Rational ##### Childhood Travel Log > "**Unknown Speaker** While listening, my sister and I kept watch out the car window, mentally noting things to fill our travel log. Apple orchards, adobe buildings, trucks with huge Douglas fir logs, oil wells." ##### Gammy's Approach to Healthcare > "**Unknown Speaker** A year or two later, I was climbing on the kitchen counter, trying to reach a glass in the cabinet, when a pain shot through my abdomen. I fell onto the floor where Gammy found me delirious." ##### Memorizing the Sermon on the Mount > "**Unknown Speaker** One in a long list of activities that I had to get dressed up for, but I liked it. Turner had a standing offer." ##### How to Win Friends > "**Unknown Speaker** My mom kept a dog-eared copy of How to Win Friends and Influence People, Dale Carnegie's distillation of human relations, into a series of tricks and tips. She eventually gave a copy to each of her kids for Christmas." #### Chapter Four: Lucky Kid ##### Little Delaware > "I wrote up an obit of a board member who had worked his way from low-level salesman to executive committee member. By the time I was done, I had generated 177 pages on Little Delaware." ##### Childhood Dreams > "That school year, I filled out a one-page form indicating my interests in favorite subjects. It was something my mom had us do every year." ##### Paper Route Failure > "At one point, it was decided that I should take on the responsibility of my own paper route. I made a little bit of money, but it was a thankless task, delivering a free circular nobody subscribed to and few people wanted." ##### Silent Treatment > "During this period, I could go days without speaking, emerging from my room only for meals in school. Call me to dinner." ##### Gates' Childhood Parties > "She was a masterful social engineer. Before the party began, my mother would sit my sisters and me down on the sofa for a briefing." #### Chapter Five: Lakeside ##### Searching for Identity > "I was probably all of those things. With the distance of years and perspective of age, I see how hard I was searching for an identity." ##### Kent's Vision > "I still remember his phone number. Like most kids, I spent almost zero time thinking about my future, aside from a vague notion that I wanted to be a scientist or maybe a lawyer like my dad." ##### Kent's Influence > "Kent was way ahead of us. He was always talking about where he wanted to be in 10 years, in 20 years, and strategizing how to get there." ##### First Program > "Ready? 10." ##### Early Programming Challenges > "I'm not sure he showed his face again in that room. It was a lesson to all of us." ##### Free Computer Access > "The minutes added up. Aware of this, Mrs." ### Curiosity, School, and Computers #### Chapter Six: Free Time ##### Recipe Program > "At home, my mom cooked from recipe cards. She kept neatly categorized in a small wooden box." ##### Life-Saving Trail > "Despite my failure on the 50-miler, or maybe because of it, I don't know, Mike and his parents invited me to join them on their next trip, which would take place in June after school ended. The other scouts who would be joining us, Rocky, Riley, and Danny, were 13, like me, and gung-ho about hiking." #### Chapter Seven: Just Kids? ##### Double Textbooks > "**Unknown Speaker** This was less about the inconvenience of carrying books back and forth than it was about appearing as if I didn't need to study at home. I'd turned myself into one of the scholarly elite, but I wasn't ready to let go of my smart aleck devil may care facade." ##### Science as a Way of Thinking > "**Unknown Speaker** He blew up the notion of science as a collection of proven facts to be rotely memorized. Science was a way of thinking about the world." ##### Dr. Morris's Teachings > "**Unknown Speaker** I remember being fascinated by ads claiming that super strong glue could make anything stick together. Why is it so incredibly sticky?" ##### Appealing Nature of Science > "**Unknown Speaker** Science grabbed me in part because it fit my need for order and organization and offered the kind of reassuring, satisfying framework I'd already found in math. It also appealed to my hyper-rational sense of the world." ##### Kent's Drive > "**Unknown Speaker** On our trip, Kent all but captained the boat as we sailed north. He checked tides and the depth sounder so we wouldn't want to ground entering Malibu Rapids, the narrow opening to the Princess Louisa Inlet." ##### Lakeside Programming Group > "**Unknown Speaker** There was no way we should pay ISI's high prices. He had a plan." ##### Taking Charge > "**Unknown Speaker** Didn't he know a contract was binding? I was annoyed by what I considered their laziness and unprofessionalism." ##### UW Computer Science Lab > "**Unknown Speaker** In the meantime, Kent had approached the head of the University of Washington Computer Science Lab, explained our project, and asked if we could use the lab. It was a perfect example of Kent acting like an adult and getting treated like one." #### Chapter Eight: The Real World ##### Missing Transcript _(No transcript text was included in the export.)_ ##### Merging Schools > "**Unknown Speaker** The only issue I had with the addition of the St. Nick's students was that I had no idea how to talk to them." ##### Kent's Climbing Accident > "**Unknown Speaker** That night, Kent called me as usual. No time to work that weekend, he told me." ##### Kent's Parents' Grief > "**Unknown Speaker** He was my best friend, but he was her baby. At some level, I knew she and Mr." ##### Remembering Kent's Death > "**Unknown Speaker** I thanked Mr. Evans and said I didn't need anything." ##### Kent's Influence > "**Unknown Speaker** When we met, I was a 13-year kid with raw IQ and a competitive streak, but little aim other than to win whatever game I was playing. Kent helped give me direction, setting me on the course of defining who I wanted to become." ##### Paul's Experience > "**Unknown Speaker** By then, he had turned Are You Experienced into a mantra and a test. The question posed by the title track of Hendrix's debut album was Paul's shorthand for whether a person had attained self-awareness and whether you had experimented with drugs." ##### Intel's 4004 Microprocessor > "**Unknown Speaker** I had first heard about the company from Paul in the fall of the previous year. He'd shown me an advertisement in Electronic News in which Intel announced that it had invented a microprogrammable computer on a chip." #### Chapter Nine: One Act and Five Nines ##### John Norton's Mariner 1 Error > "**Unknown Speaker** In his late 20s, John oversaw the software that controlled a key part of the 1962 Mariner 1 space probe. The Venus-bound probe made history when NASA destroyed it minutes into its flight after controllers realized its radar systems weren't working." ##### John Norton's Mariner 1 Failure > "**Unknown Speaker** In his late 20s, John oversaw the software that controlled a key part of the 1962 Mariner 1 space probe. The Venus-bound probe made history when NASA destroyed it minutes into its flight after controllers realized its radar systems weren't working." ##### Acid Trip and Orthodontist > "**Unknown Speaker** I had smoked some pot earlier, so I was feeling a bit uninhibited when a friend offered me acid. I had always resisted Paul's assertion that I needed to be experienced by taking LSD." ##### Becoming the Best > "**Unknown Speaker** That summer, I thought a lot about how a person becomes the very best at something. Norton was such a commanding figure, peerless in his talent and professionalism." ### Microsoft and the Making of Bill Gates #### Chapter Ten: Precocious ##### Math 55 > "**Narrator (Primary storyteller)** Near the bottom of the course list, just before the independent study options, I found the highest number offered to freshmen. Math 55A and 55B, a two-course sequence in advanced calculus." ##### Math 55A > "**Narrator (Primary storyteller)** Unlock it. I signed up, took the entrance test later that week, and passed it." ##### John Mather's Early Brilliance > "**Narrator (Primary storyteller)** My classmates were soon buzzing about Mather. He had made full professor in record time at age 28." ##### Aiken Lab's VR History > "**Narrator (Primary storyteller)** On one of my first visits to the lab, Eric Roberts, a graduate student in applied math, had walked me through its recent history. See those loose wires hanging from the back of the computer rack?" ##### Flight Simulator > "**Narrator (Primary storyteller)** He explained that a few years later, Cohen, by then a Harvard professor, worked with two graduate students to soup up the flight simulator. Their idea was radical at the time." ##### 3D Baseball Game > "**Narrator (Primary storyteller)** Instead of the view from a plane cockpit, I pictured a 3D baseball park with the computer's displays each offering a different real-time camera angle of the game. A player would use the joystick and other PDP-1 controls to pitch, hit, and catch, with the computer sending data over ARPANET for the PDP-10 to calculate the complex physics of ball Speed, trajectory, and a runner rounding the bases." ##### Harvard's Academic Intimidation > "**Narrator (Primary storyteller)** Sure, take a trimester off to work. At Harvard, I was on my own, swimming in a much bigger pool." ##### Extreme Study Habits > "**Narrator (Primary storyteller)** I threw myself into a daily rhythm that worked for me even if it seemed extreme to my friends. Between studying and programming, I could be awake for 36 hours at a stretch." ##### Organic Chemistry > "**Narrator (Primary storyteller)** At least I'm Harvard's best at one thing. Toward the end of the semester, I walked into the video room, stunned to find it full of my organic chemistry classmates, re-watching the lectures they had dutifully attended all semester, Textbooks open, and molecule models in hand." ##### Being Called Precocious > "**Narrator (Primary storyteller)** But that first meeting took me aback. Don't remember exactly what I said, but I recall diving into that hyperkinetic stream of thought typical of me at the time, enthusing about how computers of tomorrow would be vastly Different from the dusty old things we know today, and explaining that I signed up for the psychology class because someday computers would match the power of the human brain." ##### Math 55 Disillusionment > "**Narrator (Primary storyteller)** The gap between B plus and A was the difference between being the top person in the class and being a fake. Severe take was that everyone in that class was the best person they knew in math up to that point." ##### Redefining Self-Identity > "**Narrator (Primary storyteller)** Up until then, I had experienced only a few situations in which I felt someone was hands down better than I was in some intellectual endeavor that mattered to me. And in those cases, I soaked up what they could teach me." ##### DEC Job Offer > "**Narrator (Primary storyteller)** At DEC, I interviewed with the makers of the Topps 10 operating system. Topps was the same software I had banged on at C-Cubed and that Paul, Rick, and I helped customize at Bonneville." ##### Declined Job Offers > "**Narrator (Primary storyteller)** The deck people were kind to even consider me. And yet, I didn't take the job." #### Chapter Eleven: Wild Card ##### Recurring Dream > "**Unknown Speaker** I have a recurring dream that even now can jolt me out of bed. The dream gets right to the point." ##### LSD Thought Experiment > "**Unknown Speaker** At the height of the evening, a curious train of logic passed through my mind. On a computer, you can delete a file and even wipe out all of your stored data." ##### Calling MITS > "**Unknown Speaker** We worried that anyone who knew we were just a college kid and a low-level programmer at Honeywell would never take us seriously. That was why Paul was so definitive in his letter, that we had a version of basic ready to go, and that's why I wanted Paul to do the talking." ##### Bootstrap Loader > "**Unknown Speaker** On the plane, Paul realized we didn't write a small bit of code, called a bootstrap loader, to tell the Altair to load our program in memory and launch it. Paul pulled out a notepad and madly wrote out the missing lines of code." #### Chapter Twelve: Be So Correct ##### Naming Microsoft > "**Narrator (episode host)** It was Paul who had the next thought. Since we were writing software for microcomputers, how about combining those two words?" #### Chapter Thirteen: Micro-Soft ##### Homebrew Computer Club's First Glimpse > "In Menlo Park, California, a group of 32 hobbyists had gathered in March in a garage to swap information on the Altair. Ahead of that meeting, one member had driven from California to Albuquerque just to see if the company behind the mail-order computer was real." ##### Paul Allen's Crucial Role > "For Microsoft, Paul helped set our technology direction and was the keeper of our development tools. The work that he had done to create the simulator for the PDP-10 and related tools would pay dividends for years." ##### Rick's courage to come out > "At the time, I probably didn't fully appreciate how much courage it took Rick to come out. In the early 1970s, homosexuality was still widely stigmatized, and the gay rights movement was just starting." ##### Coding All Day > "Life that fall was mostly a whirl of writing code for days on end and sleeping only when I had to, and often wherever I happened to be. I'd catnap at the terminal or just crawl onto the floor next to it." ##### Ed Roberts' flawed memory boards > "These boards were a big topic for the happy hour crowd. It was clear that Mitz should stop selling them." ##### Declined Judgeship > "The profits are murky. I had returned to Albuquerque after the holidays when I got a call from my parents, who told me that my father was a top pick for a federal judgeship." ##### A Father's Judgeship > "I had returned to Albuquerque after the holidays when I got a call from my parents, who told me that my father was a top pick for a federal judgeship. The chief judge of the U.S." ##### NCR Deal > "That spring, we had signed the deal to tailor 8080Basic to the NCR 7200 for what at the time was the staggering sum of $150,000. Since MITS had the exclusive rights to sub-license our software, we'd have to split that amount with them evenly." ##### Open Letter to Hobbyists > "Why is this? As the majority of hobbyists must be aware, most of you steal your software." ##### First Professional Speech > "Days later, on March 27, 1976, I nervously walked on stage at the grandly named World Altair Convention, held at an airport hotel in Albuquerque. The confab was dreamed up by Dave Bunnell, the MITS writer, as a way to further spread the buzz over the Altair." ##### Microsoft's Business Plan > "Then barrage potential customers with letters offering our software and consulting. We might even spring for an answering service on the chance that orders would start flooding in." #### Chapter Fourteen: Source Code ##### Microsoft's Early Sales Efforts > "Typed letters and phone call after phone call to company after company, hoping to reach someone who might be interested in buying our software. A sample." ##### Meeting Steve Ballmer > "I signed up for a course in British history during the Industrial Revolution and used my applied math wildcard to talk my way into Econ 2010, a graduate-level economic theory class. There was another undergraduate in the class, a math major named Steve Ballmer." ##### Pertec Acquisition Fallout > "Soon after Pertech began courting MITS, everything Microsoft-related stopped completely. Royalty payments stopped." ##### Sam Strum > "My parents knew it would be pointless to tell me to stay in school. I was too independent, but my mom sometimes used subtle means to try to convince me." ##### Cement Plant Road > "Late one night, we stopped at the plant and discovered they kept a couple of bulldozers with keys in the ignition. Chris and I spent more than a few nights at the top of that cement plant road teaching ourselves how to drive the massive earth movers." ##### Meeting Steve Jobs > "In April, amid the standoff, I flew to San Francisco to attend the first West Coast Computer Fair. Walking into the Civic Auditorium, I was astounded." ##### Arbitration Show > "Eddie Curry played the same role for the mid-side. Rick, Paul, and I were deposed, as well as Ed Roberts, Eddie, and various other people from the companies." ##### Cash Crunch > "In one of my many phone calls with my parents that summer, I broached the subject that I wanted to avoid. I might need to borrow some money to keep us going." ##### Bob Greenberg's Loan > "I don't know if our company lunch that week prompted what happened next, but Microsoft got a lucky break. Bob Greenberg, who had worked with us for less than a month, told me he would loan Microsoft $7,000, enough to help make our payroll." ##### Bill Gates and Ed Roberts > "As our paths diverged, we saw each other less and less. In 2009, when I heard that Ed was hospitalized with pneumonia, I called him." ##### Reconnecting with Ed Roberts > "On the call, I told him that I wanted him to know that I learned a lot from him when we worked together, something I never would have said at the time. I was very immature and a bit arrogant, but I've changed a lot since then, I told him." ##### Commodore Basic Easter Egg > "And the pet was simply Commodore Basic. In a version for Commodore, we squeezed a little surprise into the code." ### Reflection, Family, and Legacy #### Epilogue | End Credits ##### Richard Feynman > "I spent a rare vacation in my early 30s watching films of Richard Feynman teaching physics to university students. I was instantly captivated by the absolute mastery he had of his topic and the childlike wonder he showed in explaining it." ##### Neurodiversity > "If I were growing up today, I probably would be diagnosed on the autism spectrum. In the time of my childhood," ##### Neurodiversity > "If I were growing up today, I probably would be diagnosed on the autism spectrum. In the time of my childhood, the fact that some people's brains process information differently from others widely understood." ##### Parental Support > "The term neurodivergent wouldn't be coined until the 1990s. My parents had no guideposts or textbooks to help them grasp why their son became so obsessed with certain projects, tiny Delaware, missed social cues, and could be rude or inappropriate Without seeming to notice his effect on others." ##### Bill Gates' Mother > "It was as if I needed to clear my mom's bar by such a wide margin that there would be nothing left to say on the matter. But of course, there was always something to be said." ##### Self-Understanding > "Piecing together memories helps me better understand myself, it turns out. It's a marvel of adulthood to realize that when you strip away all the years and all the learning, much of who you are was there from the start."