Bill Gates is a frugal, persevering, supreme computer geek who can “hack code” with the greatest of them and is probably the most successful entrepreneur of the 20th century. While the other side of him is a hard-driven businessman. Gates felt that standards were one of the most important attributes you could possess in a company which has shaped the computer industry into what it is today.
I chose to write about Mr. Gates because he is a programming genius, and through his programming skills, and competitive business skills, in just 25 years, he built a two-man operation into a multibillion-dollar company. He accomplished this achievement by taking current technology and adapting it to a specific market. He conquered the market
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Other things didn’t interest him as much as computers did so he preferred to spend his time playing poker and video games rather than attending classes. Gates got by on very little sleep and would cram for tests, and pass with a decent grade. In December of 1974, Allen and Gates took a chance on an opportunity regarding the Altair 8800. They called the manufacture, MITS, in Albuquerque, NM telling them they had written a version of the popular computer language BASIC for the Altair, so the president asked to see the version they had written, but they had not written anything yet. So, Gates and Allen, began working day and night in Harvard’s computer lab. Since they had not Altair to work on they had to run simulations on other computers. Without knowing if the program would work, Allen traveled to Albuquerque to test the program on the Altair, and it worked. Once this happened, Gates decided to drop out of Harvard and move to Albuquerque with Allen. This is where they officially established Microsoft. Shortly thereafter, MITS collapsed. This did not affect Gates or Allen, as they were already writing software for other computer start-ups including Apple, Commodore, and Tandy Corp.
In 1979, they moved the company to Seattle. Gates bought an existing operating system for $50,000, and developed it into MS-DOS, which he then licensed to IBM. Gates constructed
Gates later went on co-found Microsoft and create lasting and groundbreaking computer software that continues to be valuable to society as technology has become common in day to day life. Undoubtedly, Gate’s intellect, passion, and creativity led him to create an extraordinary product and established him as a modern genius.
After Gates graduated high school, with a perfect 800 on the SAT, he went to Harvard law school in 1973 (“Gates, Bill” 2) (“Gates, William Henry, III” 1). In 1975 his friend Paul Allen came up to him while Bill was in college and showed him a Popular Mechanics article about a $350 microcomputer, Gates read this article and was convinced that he wanted to be in the computer industry (“Gates, William Henry, III” 1). As a sophomore in college he and Paul Allen made the computer language BASIC compatible to microcomputers, this took much skill and he was the first to do it (Leaders of info 2). He did this for a company called MITS (Leaders of info 2). This shows his motivation to do well in the world, and to be successful. With this new success in the BASIC software, he dropped out of Harvard and went to pursue his new career (“Gates, Bill 1). He went to Albuquerque, New Mexico with Paul and they both founded a new company called Microsoft to mass produce their new software (Leaders of Info 2).
William Gates III was born in Seattle, Washington in 1955. When he was thirteen, he wrote his first software program, which enabled him and his friends to play tic-tac-toe. While Gates was attending Harvard, his best friend Paul Allen showed him the newest electronic hardware system in Popular Electronics magazine. A man named Ed Roberts had invented the
William Henry Gates III was born in Seattle, Washington on October 28, 1955. He loved to play board games and was competitive at most everything he did. He was an intelligent student and his best subject in grade school was math. At the time when Bill was growing up, there weren't home computers like the PC, the laptop, or the tablet like we have today. Computers were owned by large companies and took up lots of space. The first computer program he wrote was a version of tic-tac-toe while using the computer at his school. At one point, Bill and some of his fellow students were banned from using the computer because they hacked it to get extra computing time. They then agreed to look for bugs in the computer system in return for computer time.
Gates entered Harvard University in 1973 and pursued his studies for the next year and a half. However, his life changed in January 1975 when Popular Mechanics carried a cover story on a $350 microcomputer, the Altair, made by a firm called MITS in New Mexico. When Allen showed him the story, Gates knew where he wanted to be: at the forefront of
“Gates wrote his first software program at the age of 13. In high school he helped form a group of programmers who computerized their school’s payroll system and founded Traf-O-Data, a company that sold traffic-counting systems to local governments” (“Bill Gates | American Computer Programmer” par2). Bill Gates developed an early interest in computer science and started writing computer programs at a very young age because he was fascinated by how the machines would conduct software code perfectly. He spent countless hours learning how to program on various systems and thereafter pursued his passion through college. (Haden par9). Gates has influenced thousands of people across the world with his extraordinary skills. Bill Gates is a successful programmer because with the facilities that he created, it is allowing people across the world to share ideas and give everyone a taste of technology. Gates’s achievements highlight a bright future for the world as he has made so many changes in our world technologically, thus, this proves that Bill Gates a Renaissance
Bill Gates established a number of different programs for a huge number of establishments. “Microsoft was born when Bill was looking at a MITS Altair 8800 computer in 1974 (Bill Gates, 2011)”. He contacted MITS to inquire if they would be interested in him developing programs for their company. It was quite some time before MITS agreed to Bill’s offer, but he began developing software programming right away and then Microsoft was generated. Other large companies such as IBM (in 1980) would come to him for software development (Bill Gates, 2011).
In 1975, Allen and Gates started marketing a BASIC programming language translator with their newly founded company Microsoft (“Paul Allen” Famous entrepreneurs). Soon, through deals with other emerging companies such as Apple and Commodore, Allen had arranged for their company to purchase an operating system called Q-DOS for $50,000 (“Paul Allen” Biography). The duo reinvented the operating system and renamed it MS-DOS the gave exclusive rights of MS-DOS to a personal computer company called IBM, who had originally commissioned the OS.
Microsoft capitalized on the need for an operating system for the blossoming personal computer industry. Gates developed the BASIC programming language in the late 1970s, but the DOS operating system created for the IBM personal computer in the early 1980s solidified Microsoft's position. Teaming with IBM on additional projects, Gates and his team also developed a series of languages for new IBM systems: BASIC, FORTRAN, COBOL, and Pascal. As IBM computers grew faster and more efficient in the late 1980s, Microsoft continued to upgrade the renamed
People take for granted how far technology has come in the past 40 years. Back then, computers weren’t seen as a consumer product, only as a high end company’s tool for completing complicated equations or automating systems. Bill Gates was the man who headed the shift in software development that led to a lot of the technology we have today. Most people probably already know Bill Gates as the richest man in the world but what is more interesting is the story behind his fortune. Bill Gates is considered one of the most influential people in technology because of his breakthrough innovations in personal computers and generous philanthropy.
Gates graduated from Lakeside School in 1973. He scored 1590 out of 1600 on the Scholastic Aptitude Test and subsequently enrolled at Harvard College in the fall of 1973. While at Harvard, he met his future business partner, Steve Ballmer, whom he later appointed as CEO of Microsoft. He also met computer scientist Christos Papadimitriou at Harvard, with whom he collaborated on a paper about algorithms. He did not have a definite study plan while a student at Harvard and spent a lot of time using the school 's computers. He remained in contact with Paul Allen, his school friend, joining him at Honeywell during the summer of 1974. The following year saw the release of the MITS Altair 8800 based on the Intel 8080 CPU, and Gates and Allen saw this as the opportunity to start their own computer software company. He had talked this decision over with his parents, who were supportive of him after seeing how much Gates wanted to start a company.
Gates’ passion for technology began at the age of 8, when he built his first computer program. This program allowed the player to compete in a game of tic tac toe
The beginning of Microsoft Inc. started with Bill Gates and Paul Allen writing computer program code for local businesses and municipalities. In 1975 they were inspired by an issue of Popular Electronics that showed the new Altair microcomputer kit, manufactured by MITS Computer. Bill Gates and Paul Allen wrote a version of BASIC, a computer programming language, for the machine. Later that year Bill Gates left Harvard University to work full time developing programming languages for the Altair, and he and Paul Allen relocated to Albuquerque, New Mexico, to be near MITS Computer, where Paul Allen took a position as director of software development. Bill Gates and Paul Allen named their partnership Micro-soft (Microsoft
They sold a small computer outfitted with their program that could count traffic for the city. Gates also worked as a Congressional Page and at a programming company called 'TRW'. After all his minor jobs, Gates and Allen founded Microsoft in 1975, the largest computer based company in the world. Gates is the Chief Executive officer and Paul Allen is VP. They are both very wealthy due to this business.
After reading the January 1, 1975 issue of Popular Electronics that demonstrated the Altair 8800, Bill Gates called the creators of the new microcomputer, MITS (Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry Systems), offering to demonstrate an implementation of the BASIC programming language for the system.[22] Gates had neither an interpreter nor an Altair system, yet in the eight weeks before the demo he and Allen developed the interpreter. The interpreter worked at the demo and MITS agreed to distribute Altair BASIC.[7] Gates left Harvard University, moved to Albuquerque, New Mexico where MITS was located, and founded Microsoft there. The name Microsoft, without the hyphen, was first used in a letter from Gates to Allen on November 29, 1975,[7]