Bill Gates interview, 1986

[Markbnj]

Whether you love or hate the company he built, this is a guy who understands what we do at a fundamental level. There are so many good bits in this, and yeah, some of it is obviously dated, but a lot falls into the category of enduring principles.

Warning, it's a long read.

http://programmersatwork.wordpress.com/bill-gates-1986/

 

[Train]

I'm surprised he said he doesn't code in that interview.

I remember reading an interview around 2000 or so where he said he likes to spend 40% of his time coding. Perhaps once he hired Ballmer as the CEO, he got back into coding for a while.

A true coder can never get away 100%. Even if I were made CEO of a giant company, I'd still want to bang on some code at least a few times a week.

 

[smakme7757]

I'm surprised he said he doesn't code in that interview.

I remember reading an interview around 2000 or so where he said he likes to spend 40% of his time coding. Perhaps once he hired Ballmer as the CEO, he got back into coding for a while.

A true coder can never get away 100%. Even if I were made CEO of a giant company, I'd still want to bang on some code at least a few times a week.

With the amount of meetings, pressure and scheduled trips a CEO of one of the worlds largest company would have to deal with it would be hard to find time during working hours. It would have to be your primary hobby if you still wanted to code.

 

[Train]

just got to the end. Very last sentence:

I sometimes envy my colleagues who get to focus just on the program they’re writing.

This basically describes my dilemma as a team lead. On one hand I like interacting with clients, looking at the big picture, mentoring, etc. But I also get antsy when I spend too much time away from just focusing on some code.

But when I focus on some code for too long, PM-level stuff gets neglected.

 

[smackababy]

just got to the end. Very last sentence:


This basically describes my dilemma as a team lead. On one hand I like interacting with clients, looking at the big picture, mentoring, etc. But I also get antsy when I spend too much time away from just focusing on some code.

But when I focus on some code for too long, PM-level stuff gets neglected.

This is why I try my hardest to stay out of the higher level jobs. I love to code, and that is what I want to do. I don't want to manager codes. I don't want to go to meetings about budgets. I want to code.

 

[BoberFett]

Interesting. It does seem that this philosophy got lost over the years at MS:

Features are kind of crummy in a way, because the more features you have, the bigger the manual is. And features are only beneficial if people take the time to use them, whereas speed–if you can print the pages faster, or show it on the screen faster, or recalc it faster–that’s worth an incredible amount. If you can give the users a few simple commands and make the program efficient enough to do what they want with those few commands, then you’re much better off One sign of very good programs is that even internally they follow that philosophy of simplicity.