Source Code is not about Microsoft or the Gates Foundation or the future of technology. It's the human, personal story of how Bill Gates became who he is today: his childhood, his early passions and pursuits. It's the story of his principled grandmother and ambitious parents, his first deep friendships and the sudden death of his best friend; of his struggles to fit in and his discovery of a world of coding and computers in the dawn of a new era; of embarking in his early teens on a path that took him from midnight escapades at a nearby computer center to his college dorm room, where he sparked a revolution that would change the world.
A memoir would offer him the chance to reflect and expand on what has been an undeniably eventful life. What might he have to say? Not much, it turns out — at least not yet ... The voice in this book is upbeat, wryly self-deprecating and unflaggingly congenial ... Contains plenty of nicely rendered details, but as far as narrative tension goes, for the first 50 pages or so there is hardly any.
We are treated to an unexpectedly revealing account of the swirl of factors leading to the birth of Microsoft and the ascent of personal computing ... Another component of success emerges from the pages of Source Code: something visceral, even primal. Mr. Gates was driven and hyper-competitive.
