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  • Published: 4 February 2025
  • ISBN: 9781802068429
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 336

Source Code

My Beginnings




The origin story of one of the most influential and transformative business leaders and philanthropists of the modern age.

Source Code describes with unprecedented candour Bill Gates’ life from his childhood in Seattle to dropping out of Harvard aged 20 in 1975. Shortly afterwards he wrote, with Paul Allen, the programme which became the foundation of Microsoft and eventually for the entire software industry, changing the way the world works and lives.

Gates writes about the centrality of family to his life – his encouraging grandmother and ambitious parents, about struggles to fit in, his rebelliousness, and the impact on him of the death of his closest friend. We see his extraordinary mind developing as a teenager, his excitement about the rapidly emerging technology of computing, and the earliest signs of his phenomenal business acumen.

Source Code is a warm, wise and revealing self-portrait of one of the most influential people of our age.

  • Published: 4 February 2025
  • ISBN: 9781802068429
  • Imprint: Penguin eBooks
  • Format: EBook
  • Pages: 336

About the author

Bill Gates

Bill Gates is a technologist, business leader, and philanthropist. In 1975, he cofounded Microsoft with his childhood friend Paul Allen. Today, he is cochair of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, where he has spent more than twenty years working on global health and development issues, including pandemic prevention, disease eradication, and problems concerning water, sanitation, and hygiene. He has three children.

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