The Myth of Gates as Geek

By Paul Kedrosky · November 27, 2005 · ·

From a piece on Microsoft’s thrust into high-performance computing in the current InformationWeek:

The most powerful lessons in life sometimes draw from long-ago experiences. So it may have been when Bill Gates reminisced last week about bypassing Harvard’s computer-science classes 30 years ago. “I was taking physiological psychology and economics,” the school’s most famous nongraduate recalled. “If you look at my course sign-up, you wouldn’t think I was a software person at all.”

Related posts:

  1. The Myth of the Myth of Disruptive Technology
  2. Geek Gourmet: Nathan Myrhvold’s Kitchen
  3. Judge Judy: Bill Gates Cheats
  4. PNAS Geek-Out, Part II: Unsupervised Learning
  5. Gates Does Diet Orange Crush & the Recluse Thing

Comments

  1. noname says:
    November 27, 2005 at 10:27 am

    Ah. Were they software classes 30 years ago? I remember my first computer exposure at computer camps and high school some 20+ years ago but nothing 30 years ago.

  2. anon says:
    November 29, 2005 at 3:01 am

    Having been through learning software in that era, and also having been something of a wunderkind growing up I can imagine that he didn’t take many or any computer classes because there was nothing in those classes that would teach him anything.