Source Code: My Beginnings

by Bill Gates

The origin story of one of the most influential and transformative business leaders and philanthropists of the modern age.

The business triumphs of Bill Gates are widely known: the twenty-year-old who dropped out of Harvard to start a software company that became an industry giant and changed the way the world works and lives; the billionaire many times over who turned his attention to philanthropic pursuits to address climate change, global health, and U.S. education.

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.

Bill Gates tells this, his own story, for the first time: wise, warm, revealing, it’s a fascinating portrait of an American life.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, Memoir, Business, Audiobook, Autobiography, Technology

336 pages, Hardcover

First published February 4, 2025

About the author

My new memoir Source Code: My Beginnings tells the story of my childhood and the early days of Microsoft. It's available now.

Reviews

[Alexander Song]

这应该是比尔盖茨本人写的自传，有强烈的个人风格。书中的内容再次印证了盖茨美国白人精英家庭的出身：祖父是私人银行董事长，曾任西雅图市市长、华盛顿州议员、美联储高层官员；母亲华是盛顿大学校董、IBM等一众科技公司和NGO机构的董事；父亲是律师事务所合伙人，曾经在福特政府拟被任命为联邦大法官（他因为家庭原因拒绝了邀约），也曾担任过西雅图市市长职位；盖茨本人中学读的西雅图地区专门给白人精英准备的私立学校，从小喜欢玩野外徒步，从小参加童子军组织，大学同时被哈佛、耶鲁和普林斯顿录取（没被麻省理工录取的原因是他压根就没去申请，因为他不希望自己身边全是那些书呆子一样的数学天才）。他在自传里说，到了哈佛大学，他才知道大学之前的生活有多优渥，从来没想过同学中有人需要勤工俭学。可以说，盖茨是美国精英的代表了。虽然这些都是他成功背后的助推器，但实事求是地讲，盖茨本人也是极度聪明，很有远见的一个人，我认为本性才是他成功的关键。
总之，对于微软和盖茨比较感兴趣的，此书值得一读。

[XDash Fan]

对当今中国普通人而言，除了「follow热爱」和一些中产以上家庭会遵循的规则之外，几乎没什么可借鉴性

[Alex Hwang]

还行，作为国际长途航班上的消遣。