Before Jeff Bezos could create Amazon, or Mark Zuckerberg could create Facebook, or Larry Page and Sergey Brin could create Google, someone had to build the foundation of modern technology that now dominates every aspect of our lives.
And in Source Code: My Beginnings, Bill Gates—one of the Founding Fathers of the software revolution that put a computer in everyone’s home, on everyone’s lap, and in everyone’s hand—offers something far more personal than a simple rehashing of his résumé or his legacy.
This memoir—the first of three projected volumes—isn’t about his impact on the world or the empire he built. No, it’s the source code for what he would go on to achieve. In this book, Gates candidly reflects on his early life, his family, the people who shaped him, as well as the quirks, privileges, and obsessions that lay the groundwork for one of the most influential careers in modern history.
More than your standard linear business biography, Gates tries—mostly successfully—to offer Source Code as a coming-of-age story. He opens the door to his childhood in Seattle, painting a vivid picture of a young boy inspired by a principled and competitive grandmother who taught him the art of winning at card games, and ambitious, high-achieving parents—his father a calm and articulate lawyer, his mother a tireless community leader. The Gates household, we come to learn, was a crucible for excellence. These early dynamics would become the engine of Gates’s drive—his hunger to learn, to understand, and to win.
While the narrative mostly focuses on absorbing behind-the-scenes glimpses into what became the eventual inception of Microsoft, there are moments of awkward irrelevance that—while somewhat jarring—are also indicative of the stereotypical coder-like personality of the author.
But what stands out most in this memoir is Gates’s emotional honesty.
He freely admits to the extraordinary luck that shaped his path: being born in the right place, at the right time, and to the right people. He doesn’t try to downplay the critical nature of timing—the fact that he had access to computers as a teenager in the 1970s, at a moment when the very concept of personal computing was just beginning to stir. He acknowledges the privilege of getting thousands of hours of uninterrupted access to machines in a time when most people hadn’t even seen a computer, let alone used one. But he also makes it clear: He took that luck and ran with it.
From late-night coding sessions to joyrides in construction vehicles to his shocking habit of racking up speeding tickets, Source Code is peppered with stories that reveal Gates’s almost complete disregard for social norms. He was obsessive, stubborn, and often abrasive. He describes himself as arrogant and dismissive in his youth, while acknowledging that this also drove the tunnel-visioned intensity that helped him find the one thing he truly excelled at: computers.
The book is rich with anecdotes about the earliest days of coding—a time when a single misplaced dash could derail an entire program and waste countless hours of coding, waiting, and coding again. Gates writes with reverence for this era, recalling how he and other teenage coders jostled for limited computer time, scraping together minutes on machines that today wouldn’t be able to power a smartwatch. There’s something endearingly charming about this world, and Gates captures the tech nostalgia well. These were the days of punch cards, command lines, and dumpster diving for discarded code—far from the glamorous world of modern-day tech start-ups.
But Source Code isn’t just a story about Gates himself. It’s a tribute to the many people who played a role in his early life—teachers who gave him the freedom to pursue his obsessions, mentors who recognized his potential, and friends who pushed him to think bigger. One of the most moving chapters is his recollection of the sudden death of his childhood best friend. It’s a rare moment of vulnerability, and it underscores one of the book’s quiet themes: that behind the public figure is a man shaped not just by genius and ambition, but—at least, in part—by grief.
Gates also provides fascinating insight into the origins of his relationships with other tech pioneers. His childhood partnership with Microsoft cofounder Paul Allen gets plenty of space, as does the early moments of his competitive relationship with Apple’s Steve Jobs. These early interactions, long before either man became a household name, reveal just how small and scrappy the tech world once was—and how personality clashes and rivalries played out in the crucible of innovation.
Source Code also offers a window into stunning make-or-break tipping point moments which—much like the binary system that underpins programming itself—went on to define Gates’s success. One example was a legal battle over the ownership of a BASIC language platform that was Microsoft’s first major product. Had Microsoft not emerged victorious, would Bill Gates be a household name?
Yet, for all its technical detail and business history, the core of Source Code is largely emotional (in a distinctly programmer-esque way). Throughout the book, Gates is trying, I think sincerely, to look backward—not to justify or boast, but to understand. The book’s epilogue may conclude with the cheesy line, “I feel the same sense of anticipation, a kid alert and wanting to make sense of it all.” While undeniably cringeworthy, it seems genuine.
Throughout Source Code, Gates reflects on how his behavior affected others, on the times he was too intense, too rigid, too certain of his own intelligence. He admits he often lacked empathy, especially in his youth. In that way, Source Code is less a business memoir than a meditation on identity. It’s about the messy, often contradictory path of growing up gifted, privileged, and wildly driven. It’s about the cost of that drive—on friendships, on humility, on balance. And it’s also, in its own way, about redemption: not in the form of sweeping apologies or grand reinventions, but in the quiet honesty of looking back with clear eyes.
For readers expecting a blow-by-blow of Microsoft’s rise or a manifesto about the future of technology, Source Code may feel too introspective. But for those curious about the inner life of one of the most consequential figures of our time—and for those, like me, who benefited greatly from the technological foundation that innovators like Bill Gates created—it offers something far more valuable: a glimpse of the child behind the billionaire, and the strange, lucky, relentless path that got him there.
Source Code: My Beginnings
by Bill Gates
Knopf, 336 pp., $30
Ian Haworth is a columnist, speaker, and podcast host. You can find him on Substack and follow him on X at @ighaworth.
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