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by zohebv 5091 days ago
Gates was indeed a programming genius. He wrote the BASIC interpreter and most of the software in Microsoft's early days. He also managed to publish an algorithm with Papadimitriou as an undergrad, while running Microsoft in parallel. http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0012365X799...

> Gates could not write the compiler tools himself

You are both underestimating Gates and overestimating how hard building a compiler/tool is.