just how good a programmer is bill gates?

[tali122]

just how good a programmer is bill gates?- yes years ago i assume he was uniquely clever in creating software- but now he appears to be a 100% busineessman
so could he create and kill viruses?, could he hack anywhere? could he code a 3d game? or crack copy protection?

[OBonio]

I don't rate him personally. He's more of shrewd businessman than a programmer in my view. Doubtless he could write viruses/worms etc. Any script kiddy can. And he has access to the entire windows API, as opposed to the rest of the world who has to use what they're given. Maybe he could write something even more terrifying than anything else out there at the moment. The fact that MS buys up firms who create innovative software goes to show MS is just very rich, not innovative at all.

[palfreyman18]

I heard somewhere that he's the most spammed man- about 4 million pieces of spam a day. So my guess is he can't even stop spam from entering his own inbox, let alone create viruses + hack anywhere

[MargeB]

I thought script kiddies were so called cos they couldn't program..

[OBonio]

A lot of viruses have been scripts in the past. Some only 10 lines long. This, in my opinion, would denote the author as a script kiddy. The ability to create a text file does not a programmer make.

[Ray the DJ]

Bill wrote the first ever DOS program for IBM.
That's how he started his career.
What amazes me is that he still gets up in the morning and goes into the office.  He's obviously a workerolic!

[OBonio]

I was under the impression Bill acquired the rights to CP/M and sold that to IBM as MS-DOS. He didn't write MS-DOS at all.