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Bill Gates The Software Tester

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This year is going to be a memorable one since it's the last year that Bill is going to be with us 'softie full time.  In light of the upcoming retirement, I decided to read on his bio just to learn a bit more about him.  What I found out was somewhat amazing, especially his childhood years.

According to this Wikipedia entry (and also here and this book here), it seemed that our dear BillG actually started off his initial experience with computer as a   <drum roll>   tester!  Oh and he was a good one too.  Excerpt from the book.

Bill Gates, Paul Allen and, two other hackers from Lakeside formed the Lakeside Programmers Group in late 1968. They were determined to find a way to apply their computer skills in the real world. The first opportunity to do this was a direct result of their mischievous activity with the school's computer time. The Computer Center Corporation's business was beginning to suffer due to the systems weak security and the frequency that it crashed. Impressed with Gates and the other Lakeside computer addicts' previous assaults on their computer, the Computer Center Corporation decided to hire the students to find bugs and expose weaknesses in the computer system. In return for the Lakeside Programming Group's help, the Computer Center Corporation would give them unlimited computer time.

-- Wallace, James. 1993. Hard Drive: Bill gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire

That's right folks, before Bill became a great entrepeneur, he was a great software developer.  Before he became a great software developer, he was a great tester.  (actually he was also a hacker in a sense).  The next time I hear a dev who say they never want to do testing, I'll shove this info up their throat.  (Watch out, you know who you are...)

:-)

BTW, here's the infamous CES 2008 video perporting Bill's last day.  I think everybody has already seen it at least once, but oh well.

Video: Bill Gates Last Day CES Clip 

 Happy Testing!

Comments

  • Anonymous
    January 22, 2008
    This year is going to be a memorable one since it&#39;s the last year that Bill is going to be with us

  • Anonymous
    January 22, 2008
    So there is a pretty good SDET career path after all