Summary
Bill Gates was born in Seattle, Washington in 1955. His
father was a lawyer and his mother worked for BancSystem. His family encouraged
competition and awarded him for winning and gave him penalties for losing. When
he was in eighth grade, Gates showed a lot of interest in computers and he
wrote his own computer program. When he was 17 he made traffic on the Intel
8008 processor. In Lakeside school Gates was working in the Computer Center,
his job was to debug computer programs. When Gates was working with the
computers, he created a virus file, which goes on the network and ruins other
computers software, which causes them to crash. The school discovered what
Gates was doing and punished him by not allowing him use computers. In 1973
Gates graduated from Lakeside school and earned a score of 1590 out of 1600 on
his SAT. Harvard College accepted him in 1973 where he met his friend Steve
Ballmer who will later work with him at Microsoft. In 1975 Bill Gates dropped
out of Harvard, and went to start as software designer. With his friend Paul
Allen, Bill Gates founded his company, Microsoft in 1975, in New Mexico. At the
beginning of Microsoft Bill wrote programs for IBM and Apple. When Bill was
done with the program he sold it to IBM. In 1994 Bill Gates got married to
Melinda French, which becomes a Microsoft manager.
Bill Gates is known as a very generous person who donates
millions of dollars from his $77 billion. With his wife in 1996 they founded
the “Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation”. In this foundation the money will go
to health care and to educate children around the world. Since the beginning of
this foundation they have raised $4 billion. In 2000 Harvard University
received $25 million from Gates’s foundation to study AIDS prevention in
Nigeria.
Bill Gates didn’t suddenly become a wealthy and smart man.
He worked very hard and it took him a lot of time to build a program. He was
giving the maximum effort and used all his time for work, he was perseverant.
Between 1978 and 1984 Bill Gates only took two weeks of vacation, he worked
from 9 the morning until very late at night. This is how Bill succeeded in his
life, he gave all the effort he had and put all his time into working. He was
both determinant and perseverant.
Bill Gates faced a few obstacles in his life, but the most
important is when he made a virus. In Lakeside school Bill was interested in
computers and spent most of his time on them. He then was able to make a virus
file which will ruin the computers on the network. Bill was doing that just for
fun, so the school permanently banned him from the computers. Lakeside school
was not able to resolve the issues with the computers, so they could only ask
Bill about it. Bill agreed to remove the virus but he wanted to be allowed to
use the computers. Lakeside school accepted and Bill was able to use the
computers again. This also shows how everybody depended on Bill and nobody
could know the secret of computers.
Time Period
This biography takes place from when Bill Gates was born (1955)
till 2009 when this book was printed. “When Bill Gates was born in 1955, no one
in the world owned a personal computer.”
Aronson, Marc.
"Introduction." Bill Gates: a
twentieth-century life. New York, N.Y.: Viking, 2009. 15. Print.
Ideas of the time
Bill
Gates affected the people and the ideas around by dominating the computer world
along with Microsoft. He created Microsoft and that affected the whole concept
of computers. Before Microsoft a computer would cost thousands of dollars and
be the size of a room, so Microsoft changed everything. Bill Gates: “I know
that we will have the reality of the software. We will technically be the best
software… While we’re on the leading edge of technology, we also have to be
crating the right perception about our products and our company, the right
image.” Aronson, Marc.
"Getting Rich Fast." Bill Gates: a
twentieth-century life. New York, N.Y.: Viking, 2009. 98. Print.
Vocabulary
BASIC: A computer
language designed to enable users to give instructions to a computer. Aronson, Marc. "Microsoft." Bill Gates: a
twentieth-century life. New York, N.Y.: Viking, 2009. 72. Print.
Fortran:
Developed in 1957, Formula Translation was a programming language that made
mathematical expressions much easier. Aronson, Marc. "Harvard." Bill Gates: a
twentieth-century life. New York, N.Y.: Viking, 2009. 88. Print.
GUI:
GUI stands for Graphical User Interface. It is the software design we see. Aronson, Marc. "College." Bill Gates: a
twentieth-century life. New York, N.Y.: Viking, 2009. 90. Print.
Operating
System: A program that tells the computer how
to allocate its resources to accomplish its tasks. Aronson, Marc. "Can we fix it." Bill Gates: a
twentieth-century life. New York, N.Y.: Viking, 2009. 115. Print.
Compiler:
A program that takes in all the source code and then translates it to terms the
computer can use. Aronson, Marc.
"Computer." Bill Gates: a
twentieth-century life. New York, N.Y.: Viking, 2009. 128. Print.
Reflection
This book is very important because it
talks about the most important person in the development of computers. If it
weren’t for Bill Gates, Microsoft would have never existed and computers wouldn’t
have reached the technology that they are at today. I liked Bill Gates because
he shows perseverance and proves that if one insists on doing something there
is always a way to do so. I would definitely recommend this book to a friend
because it is very important to learn about Bill Gates’s accomplishments and
development in his life. It is very important to talk about Bill Gates because
he is the person who reinvented the computer. I think that without Bill Gates
the world would be much different and not as advanced in technology. While I
was reading the story, in many parts I would compare my life to Bill Gates’s.
We have a lot of things in common; I think that one day I am going to become a
person like Bill Gates. We have the same characteristics, at the same age; I am
interested in computer programing and technology in general. Sadly, I rate this
book a 5 over 10 because it was too general and did not give specific details
about Gates’s life and work, it was mostly on how he got rich fast. I still think
people should read books about Bill, but not this one only.
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