Source Code
Bill Gates recounts his childhood in Seattle, his early interest in computing, his years at Harvard, and the founding of Microsoft with Paul Allen. The memoir examines the family, friendships, education and personal experiences that shaped his early life.
Stats for nerds
1recommend
4mentions
4people
2025years
25% recommend75% neutral
What Hacker News says
- Here’s a human recommendation if you like that you may like these that I’ve read:
1.Sid Meier’s Memoir!: A Life in Computer Games — Sid Meier 2.Source Code: My Beginnings — Bill Gates 3.Build: An Unorthodox Guide to Making Things Worth Making — Tony Fadell 4.Prince of Persia: The Journals — Jordan Mechner 5.A Theory of Fun for Game Design — Raph Koster 6.Ask Iwata: Words of Wisdom from Satoru Iwata, Nintendo’s Legendary CEO — Viz Media (Editor) 7.Control Freak: My Epic Adventure Making Video Games — Cliff Bleszinski 8.Once Upon Atari: How I Made History by Killing an Industry — Howard Scott Warshaw 9.Press Reset: Ruin and Recovery in the Video Game Industry — Jason Schreier 10.Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture — David Kushner
- Here are the 29 books that I read but I probably read another 100 children books.
• How AI Works: From Sorcery to Science — Ronald T. Kneusel
• Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values — Robert M. Pirsig
• Martín & Meditations on the South Valley — Jimmy Santiago Baca
• Akira, Vol. 6 — Katsuhiro Otomo
• Akira, Vol. 5 — Katsuhiro Otomo
• Akira, Vol. 4 — Katsuhiro Otomo
• Akira, Vol. 3 — Katsuhiro Otomo
• Slaughterhouse-Five — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.
• Akira, Vol. 2 — Katsuhiro Otomo
• Poems & Prayers — Matthew McConaughey
• Akira, Vol. 1 — Katsuhiro Otomo
• Time’s Arrow — Martin Amis
• The Buffalo Hunter Hunter — Stephen Graham Jones
• Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly — Anthony Bourdain
• Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism — Sarah Wynn-Williams
• Dark Wire: The Incredible True Story of the Largest Sting Operation Ever — Joseph Cox
• Source Code: My Beginnings — Bill Gates
• The Afterlife of Malcolm X: An Outcast Turned Icon’s Enduring Impact on America — Mark Whitaker
• Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Resilient Parenting Prioritizing Connection Over Correction — Becky Kennedy // I would not recommend this book to anyone.
• Interior Chinatown — Charles Yu
• Everything Is Tuberculosis: The History and Persistence of Our Deadliest Infection — John Green
• Dark Matter — Blake Crouch
• Hidden Potential: The Science of Achieving Greater Things — Adam Grant
• Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D — Fabien Sanglard
• Jurassic Park — Michael Crichton
• Killing Commendatore — Haruki Murakami
• James — Percival Everett
• Devolution: A Firsthand Account of the Rainier Sasquatch Massacre — Max Brooks
• Last Argument of Kings — Joe Abercrombie
- I really enjoyed Leaders Eat Last and Careless People.
2025 brought me to:
The Mom Test - Rob Fitzpatrick
Leaders Eat Last - Simon Sinek
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms
The Time Machine - H.G. Wells
What They Don’t Teach You at Harvard Business School - Mark McCormack
The Promise of a Pencil: How an Ordinary Person Can Create Extraordinary Change - Adam Braun
Neuromancer - William Gibson
Blood of Elves - Andrzej Sapkowski
We Were Eight Years In Power - Ta-Nehisi Coates
Mort - Terry Pratchett
I’m Glad My Mom Died - Jennette McCurdy
The Dark Tower: The Gunslinger - Stephen King
American Gods - Neil Gaiman
The Boy’s in the Boat - Daniel James Brown
Can’t Hurt Me - David Goggins
Rocket Fuel: The One Essential Combination That Will Get You More of What You Want from Your Business - Gino Wickman
Source Code - Bill Gates
Mythos - Stephen Fry
Educated - Tara Westover
Leaving Microsoft to Change the World - John Wood
Careless People: A Cautionary Tale of Power, Greed, and Lost Idealism is a memoir - Sarah Wynn-Williams
Hail Mary - Andy Weir
Slaughterhouse-Five - Kurt Vonnegut
The War of the Worlds - H. G. Wells
Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? - Phipip K. Dick
The Blade Itself - Joe Abercrombie
- Reading some of these books recommended here, perhaps the most shocking thing is that so much is due to randomness: an arbitrary person does something small that turns out to be on the critical path, and without it the big thing would not get completed.
I like the kind of books recommended here, but please be aware of survivor's bias (there not many books about failures! Any great recommendations? "How we could NOT get back to the moon again", "Recall: Toyota hits the breaks", "Last fag: how big tobacco lost against a Minneapolis law firm" ;-) and the fact that the winner gets to write the history. For example, next month, Bill Gates new memoir "Source Code" will come out, the first of three planned autobiographical books, and I doubt he will share with us how he strongarmed PC manufacturers into shipping Windows pre-installed in order to get the OS monopoly and other important events.
