Bill Gates wrote code very well, and was an exceedingly good programmer.
I know, because I used to sit with him late at night at the Harvard CRCT PDP-10 consoles (graduate research center in computing technology), ribbing him about hacking on such silly hobbyist computers as 8008's and 8080's. (He was working on his 8008 assembler/linker/simulator which he used to write the Altair Basic before he ever saw the hardware. Worked the first time he tried it on the real thing.)
He and I also had the same fate undergrad (I was '76, he was '77): we knew enough CS that the undergrad courses at the time (fairly underdeveloped) were too mickey mouse, so we took only grad CS courses (which were good even for their time). And he did well in those courses.
So his brilliance and his skill aren't in question.
Nor is his drive and competitiveness--that was obvious even back then. He was a serious player in the Currier House poker (bridge?) tournaments that would go on for days and involve many $K pots. (Way over my head.)
I know, because I used to sit with him late at night at the Harvard CRCT PDP-10 consoles (graduate research center in computing technology), ribbing him about hacking on such silly hobbyist computers as 8008's and 8080's. (He was working on his 8008 assembler/linker/simulator which he used to write the Altair Basic before he ever saw the hardware. Worked the first time he tried it on the real thing.)
He and I also had the same fate undergrad (I was '76, he was '77): we knew enough CS that the undergrad courses at the time (fairly underdeveloped) were too mickey mouse, so we took only grad CS courses (which were good even for their time). And he did well in those courses.
So his brilliance and his skill aren't in question.
Nor is his drive and competitiveness--that was obvious even back then. He was a serious player in the Currier House poker (bridge?) tournaments that would go on for days and involve many $K pots. (Way over my head.)