[jgrahamc]

I wouldn't idolize either of them. Idolatry seems like a bad idea. How about just reading about their lives and seeing what makes sense for you to copy for your life?

As one Zen teacher puts it: "there are no enlightened beings, only enlightened actions". So do the actions and ignore the beings.

[brudgers]

From a business perspective, Gates offers some interesting lessons - bootstrapping allows a lot of your employees to get rich - even the secretaries; eating your own dogfood can help you produce successful product lines (Project, Office, Visual Studio); you don't have to sell to the the cool kids using Pascal - BASIC is fine; and if you treat consumers like your B2B customers, you will build market share.