Source Code

Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of death.

Bill Gates (born October 28, 1955) is the author of Source Code, which describes his life from his childhood to his early twenties, shortly after the founding of Microsoft. Gates depicts his younger self as a naturally intelligent person who was nevertheless desperate to convince others of his intelligence. Gates writes that as an elementary school student, he was “raw intelligence, an information omnivore” (98), seeking to learn as much as he could about a wide variety of topics. The use of the words “raw” and “omnivore” in this passage suggests that Gates’s intelligence was natural and inherent. When he first encountered computers in middle school, he began to define himself as a computer savant, claiming that “writing programs flowed from a combination of skills that came easy to [him]: logical thinking and an ability to focus intensely for long periods” (104). Here again, the use of the phrases “flowed” and “came easy” suggests that Gates possessed a natural intelligence and aptitude for computers from an early age.

Despite the memoir’s depiction of Gates as a naturally intelligent person, Gates also admits that “it mattered to [him] to prove that [he] was smart” (129), and the