Microsoft founder Bill Gates explores the making of his internal operating system in new memoir

As he prepares to turn 70 later this year, Microsoft founder Bill Gates’ new memoir explores how his childhood quirks, upbringing, friendships and experiences coalesced into shaping his internal operating system. In “Source Code: My Beginnings,” the first installment of a trilogy retracing his journey from an often misunderstood kid to a polarizing technology titan to an influential philanthropist, Gates dissects his brain’s unusual wiring, delves into the emotional trauma of his best friend dying while they were both in high school, and revisits the birth of Traf-O-Data, a startup that he launched in Albuquerque, New Mexico, with another childhood friend, Paul Allen. “I am being reflective, which is not my normal mode, but it’s kind of time,” Gates said during an interview about the book with The Associated Press. “I had one year in school where they said, ‘Oh we should put you ahead a couple grades.’ And then another time, they said, ‘No, we should hold you back.’ And it’s like, ‘Well make up your mind.’ They were a little confounded.” Although he didn’t realize it as a boy, Gates has no doubt he was and still is neurodivergent who channeled that anomaly into learning to program computers at the right time in the right place with the patient support of his late parents.