So I just read Bill Gates’ 1976 Open Letter To Hobbyists, in which he whines about not making more money from his software. You know, instead of being proud of making software that people wanted to use. And then the bastard went on and made proprietary licences for software the industry standard, holding back innovation and freedom for decades. What a douche canoe.
Hardly. Bill Gates came from a wealthy family, attended a private school, and through it had thousands of hours of computer programming time several years before even the Altair 8800 came out. He had a personal connection to IBM through his mother, which is how Microsoft got the DOS deal. His circumstances were unique, and his success the result of a hefty dose of luck.
What kind of person owned a computer as a hobby in 1976?
a rich person