Source Code is pretty much what you might expect from Bill Gates – it’s very well written, thoughtful, and uncontroversial. Gates fills his biography with engaging anecdotes, a ton of self-awareness and self-deprecation. He recognizes his privilege – his dad was a successful lawyer, he was sent to specialized schools, and had access to technology that others would have only dreamed of.
The first half of the book is Gates pre-MicroSoft1 – he was far from a star student, struggling to stay engaged at school, doing young whiz-kid rebellion, like sneaking out of his bedroom window to…go mess with computers. There are a lot of great anecdotes in here about the roots of his nerdiness, counting cards with his grandmother, writing computer code by hand (or in his head on a long hike), and his determined independence that caused a ton of conflict with his parents. There’s a devastating story about losing his best friend to a rock-climbing accident as a teenager that springboards young Gates into the trajectory that defined him.
The first half of Source Code is good! It’s compelling! But there isn’t a lot about it that’s memorable. It’s actually a bummer to write this, because Gates seems like a humble, charming, affable guy, the kind of rich guy that seems to have forgotten he’s rich. But the first half of the book was fine. NYT agrees:
“For most of my life, I’ve been focused on what’s ahead,” Gates writes in his last paragraph. “As I grow older, though, I find myself looking back more and more.” It’s the kind of valedictory ending one would expect from a politician’s memoir: wistful, inoffensive and completely banal.
The second half of the book has a ton more to recommend it. Gates and Paul Allen (and a couple of other guys) start Microsoft on a bit of a bluff. Like so many successful companies (and a far larger number of failures that never get books written about them), there was a lot of fake-it-till-you-make-it going on.
Once Microsoft gets rolling, the book becomes super compelling, in the same way that the first season of Halt and Catch Fire was. There are threats, standoffs, lawsuits, and other high-stakes moments, as well as a healthy dose of good luck.
Lots of figures from books like Hackers, The Innovators and The Code show up in these pages: Steve Wozniak and the Homebrew Computer Club make appearances here, along with CEOs of other innovative tech companies of the 70s and early 80s.
His references to Steve Jobs are sparse but still pretty amusing. Jobs and Gates didn’t cross paths much during this era of their respective careers, but one journal entry that Gates shares shortly after they’d met made me laugh out loud:
“1.15 Steve Jobs calls. Was very rude.”
It’s pitched as Volume One of Three of Gates’ life story. While it could have been 75 pages shorter in the first half, I’ll definitely seek out Volume Two.
And if you haven’t watched Halt and Catch Fire, you should. It’s brilliant.
