Bill Gates


Bill Gates, the founder of Microsoft, is an extremely controversial figure. Some people believe that Microsoft Windows is one of the greatest gifts to the modern computer user, while other people believe that there are much operating systems out there and that he Windows has primarily retarded the growth of the computer industry. There have been many court cases dealing with Microsoft on antitrust issues in the past decade, and world opinion will remain far from united for decades to come I am sure. There is one area, however, where Bill Gates is not controversial: his philanthropy. The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has done a lot for also to charities all over the world.

One of course, one of the biggest things that the Bill Gates foundation does is to help with technological initiatives – particularly in schools. I have a friend who has a child in an inner-city school, and they have benefited directly from the Gates foundation. Through foundation grants, they were able to upgrade their computer lab with some state-of-the-art equipment that they wouldn't have been able to afford in decades. They were using extremely outdated computers at the time, so was a godsend as you might imagine. They went from not being able to use the Internet at all with their own computers to having one of the most high-tech labs in the city – quite an impressive jump.

Another thing about Bill Gates that is pretty interesting to a lot of people is his position as a software pioneer. Whether or not you like his current company, it is fascinating to read about his adventures in the beginning of the era of modern computing. He really was one of the first to put together computers, engineer the software to run on them, and most importantly, market them to the public. The genius of Microsoft in general and Bill Gates in particular is not in the software engineering so much as in their marketing. They've really been able to bring the personal computer to a mass market in the way that no one else has been able to do. Even Apple, with its sleek consumer friendly interfaces and worry free operating systems has lost badly in the software wars to Bill Gates and the Microsoft Corporation. Whatever sort of programmer he is, he is a master businessman, and will be remembered as such for decades.