The Joy of Looking Back: A Guest Post by Bill Gates
You have heard a lot about Bill Gates, but what do you know about him as a person? In Source Code, he finally opens up, from being a misfit child to nearly getting kicked out of college. It’s an interesting — and surprising — portrait of the beginnings of the larger-than-life personality that quite literally changed the world. Read on for an exclusive essay from Bill on how it felt to look back on his life and write Source Code.
Hardcover
$27.00
$30.00
Source Code: My Beginnings
Source Code: My Beginnings
By Bill Gates
In Stock Online
Hardcover
$27.00
$30.00
The origin story of one of the most influential and transformative business leaders and philanthropists of the modern age
The origin story of one of the most influential and transformative business leaders and philanthropists of the modern age
When I was a kid, I was obsessed with the future. I knew there were lessons to be learned from the past, but I didn’t see much point in dwelling on things that couldn’t be changed—especially when it came to my own life. Even once I became an adult, I remained more focused on what’s next.
But as I get older (I turn 70 this year!), I’m starting to change my mind about looking back. It turns out that it can be a lot of fun to explore your past. And my new memoir, Source Code, is the result of a recent reflection on my journey through life.
Like many people my age, I am becoming more nostalgic the older I get. The last several years of my life have been marked by big changes: My three children left home, I lost my dad to Alzheimer’s disease, and I became a grandfather. Suddenly, my childhood felt very far away, and I found comfort in looking back on it.
So, I dug through boxes of old photographs. I found school reports my mother had saved and printouts of computer code I hadn’t seen in decades. I reached out to old friends and talked to my sisters about childhood memories I had almost forgotten. For the first time, I reflected on how memories from long ago might give insight into who I am now—and once I started digging into the past, I found myself wanting to write it all down.
Source Code covers my childhood in Seattle through the decision to leave college and start Microsoft with my friend Paul Allen. I talk about the relationships, lessons, and experiences that laid the foundation for everything in my life that followed. This includes some of the tougher parts of my early life, including my sometimes-difficult relationship with my mother and the loss of my best friend in a terrible accident.
Throughout the process of writing the book, I found myself returning to memories I hadn’t revisited in decades: the time a tornado hit my house, my first programming job that required me to sneak out of my house at night, the baseball game I programmed in Harvard’s computer lab. I share stories in Source Code that I have never told publicly before, like what it was like going to therapy as a kid long before childhood therapy was common.
Of course, this isn’t just my story. I was lucky to be part of the PC revolution, and Source Code is a snapshot of a pivotal moment in technology history. The book chronicles those early, intense days of Microsoft, when every decision felt momentous and every line of code could make or break us.
I hope you find Source Code as fun to read as it was to write. Maybe it will inspire you to pull out those old boxes of memories that you haven’t touched in years—you never know what you will learn about yourself in the process!
