Book SummarySource Code, by Bill Gates

1-Page Summary1-Page Book Summary of Source Code

Bill Gates is renowned as a businessman, software developer, and pioneer of the computer revolution. At age 19, he founded Microsoft, which he would build into one of the world’s largest tech companies. Products based on software Gates designed now run on most of the world’s home computers, as well as many business and government systems. Since stepping back from Microsoft, Gates has focused on philanthropic efforts to improve global health, reduce poverty, and develop clean energy solutions to the problem of climate change.

But how did Gates become the man he is today? What experiences led him to be in the right place at the right time with the right set of skills to stake his first claim on the home computing landscape? In *[Source...

Source Code Summary Starting Out (1955-1960)

William Gates III, known to his family as “Trey” and only much later as “Bill,” was born in Seattle, Washington on October 28, 1955. Gates says this was the first stroke of luck—he was born into an era of abundance, progress, and excitement for the future. To be raised in a white, middle-class family in Seattle in the 1950s and ’60s was to be surrounded by upwardly mobile professionals of every stripe—doctors, lawyers, engineers—as well as to be immersed in a culture of technological advancement (Seattle was home to the aircraft manufacturer Boeing). While all this certainly left a mark on Gates, his outlook on life would also be shaped by his parents and his maternal grandmother, whom he called “Gami.”

(Shortform note: Gates’s depiction of Seattle in his childhood isn’t based simply on nostalgia. In The Fourth Turning, William Strauss and Neil Howe track the highs and lows of generational cycles in American life, and they confirm that the period Gates was born into marked an upswing in social order, public investment, and the creation...

Source Code Summary Growing Pains (1961-1967)

Despite the strong examples set by his family members, Gates admits that he sometimes exhausted them. Gates was the “middle child” between two sisters, and he admits to being the most frustrating of his siblings from his parents’ point of view—his older sister Kristi was an academic high achiever who played by the rules, while his younger sister Libby was the most outgoing and athletic of the three. Gates describes himself as having been energetic, intense, single-minded, and often rebellious as a young child. In this section, we’ll describe his troubles fitting in at school, his conflicts with other family members, and how these problems reached a breaking point before he was 12 years old.

(Shortform note: According to the “birth order theory” first proposed by the psychotherapist Alfred Adler, the sequence in which siblings are born has a direct impact on their personalities. In this framework, firstborn children like Gates’s sister Kristi tend to value achievement, structure, and conscientiousness, whereas middle children often develop people-pleasing traits and negotiation skills from being “sandwiched” between...

Source Code Summary Introduction to Computers (1968-1971)

Gates’s newfound truce with his parents coincided with another major change in his life—in 7th grade he began attending Lakeside School, a private educational institution that his parents felt would give him the challenges he needed. Gates says that this was a massive stroke of luck, because in 1968, a year after he enrolled, Lakeside School acquired its first computer terminal, where Gates learned the skills that would shape the rest of his life. Gates describes his first experiments with computing, his first opportunities to put his skills to use, and how he and his Lakeside friends formed their first computer business.

(Shortform note: Lakeside School, which Gates attended, is still an active academic institution in the Seattle area. The school’s stated academic mission is to enhance students’ personal development in addition to meeting their educational needs—helping them learn interpersonal skills, self-regulation, and critical thinking. In 2005, [Gates returned to address the school’s...

Source Code Summary Tragedy and Growth (1972)

As much as being introduced to computers shaped his life’s trajectory, Gates’s future was influenced by his childhood friendships, both with Paul Allen and with another young man named Kent Evans. Gates and Evans befriended each other in 8th grade, and Gates frequently joined Evans’s family on weekend and summer excursions. Unlike most of Gates’s peers, Evans was passionate about his interests, especially national politics, and had a vision for achieving success as an adult. The Lakeside Programming Group discussed earlier was his brainchild, and according to Gates, it was Evans’s intensity that prompted him to think about his own long-term plans.

(Shortform note: Evans wasn’t alone in his passion for politics—the years when he and Gates knew each other marked an upswing in young people’s influence on the national stage, especially with the passage of the US Constitution’s 26th amendment, lowering the voting age to 18. Though Evans would never get to vote himself, he was part of a new demographic—the youth vote—that was...

Source Code Summary College Life (1973-1974)

Because of his family’s high expectations, there was never any doubt that Gates would go to college. He applied to top-tier universities and was accepted to Princeton, Harvard, and Yale. Gates writes that Harvard was always his top choice, so after his final summer in Seattle, he moved to Boston for the next stage of his life—which he thought meant pursuing an academic career in advanced mathematics. Harvard opened a world of opportunities for Gates, especially in the growing field of computers, but college life and Gates’s frenetic personality clashed in ways he hadn’t counted on.

(Shortform note: The schools Gates mentions belong to the “Ivy League”—a group of eight private universities in the northeastern US that are counted among the top schools in the country. While other universities offer comparable educations, Ivy League schools are also known for their powerful alumni networks and bankable reputations—their graduates tend to land higher-paying jobs due to the clout of having an Ivy League degree. However, the...

Source Code Summary A New Direction (1975)

At about this time, Gates began to seriously consider the computer industry, not academia, as his career path of choice. He’d kept in touch with Paul Allen, who joined him in Boston that summer to start his own career in computing. Together, they were at the right stage in their lives to capitalize on a computing revolution that was going to ignite later that very year.

Gates says that the revolution began when the Altair home computer was released in 1975. Whereas the computers Gates had spent his life programming were behemoths accessed via remote terminals, the Altair was the first home computer with any real processing power. It wasn’t much like the home computers of today—it came as a disassembled kit, it lacked a keyboard or monitor, and programs had to be keyed in manually using a back-and-forth toggle switch for ones and zeros. Nevertheless, Gates recognized its potential. Computer processors had been becoming smaller and more powerful, so a computer that would fit on a desk had been inevitable. All he and Allen needed now was a way to make such devices user-friendly.

(Shortform note: [The Altair...

Source Code Summary Gates Launches His Career (1975-1978)

Despite their troubles at Harvard, Gates and Allen were able to complete a prototype of BASIC for the Altair. Between semesters in 1975, they left Boston to set up shop in Albuquerque, New Mexico, where MITS was headquartered. Little did Gates know at the time, but his life had just changed direction. Over the next two years, he’d play a leading role in the birth of the home computer industry, clashing with both the computer hobbyist culture and the owners of MITS before turning Microsoft into the leading software-driven company of the computer revolution.

Gates writes that when he and Allen arrived in Albuquerque, they learned that MITS had vastly underestimated the demand for their Altair computer. Instead of the hundreds of orders they’d expected, thousands of computer enthusiasts wanted one, even without an easy way to input programs. Gates and Allen sold MITS exclusive worldwide rights to their BASIC software for the Altair’s processor for an initial fee of $3,000 plus royalties for each copy of their software MITS sold. Gates and Allen agreed to a 60/40 split of the proceeds, with Gates receiving the larger share, since he’d been the one most responsible for the...

Source Code Summary Reflections on Identity

Gates concludes with his departure from New Mexico and his hopeful visions of the future from that time. Throughout his memoir, he meditates on the various ways his past shaped him, including the many roles and identities he took on in his formative years. In conclusion, let’s recap how Gates’s sense of himself and his potential transitioned over time.

From the start, Gates knew he wasn’t the same as his other classmates. In elementary school, he recalls being surrounded by others who were richer, taller, more athletic, or simply cooler than he was, so in his early days, he adopted humor as what set him apart and took on the role of “class clown.” He found that this identity served him well in terms of popularity, since he could be liked for being willing to crack jokes without having to compete with more popular students on their own terms. However, this identity didn’t serve him forever. When he transferred to Lakeside School, his joking ways worked against him in the more serious, academic-minded environment and his academic performance took a hit.

(Shortform note: The “class clown” role isn’t uncommon in classroom culture—[nearly everyone had one in their...

Shortform Exercise: How Did Your Childhood Shape You?

Throughout his memoir, Gates describes how his early years shaped him into the adult he would become, emphasizing the influence of his family, friends, and certain lucky breaks that he was able to capitalize on. Think about how this reflects your own life and the childhood factors that made you who you are.

Gates lists three parental figures who influenced him in various ways—his father, mother, and grandmother. Think about one parental figure in your life. In what ways do you emulate them as an adult? What was a valuable lesson they taught you?