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Bill Gates, left, chats with Bill Nye at the Moore Theater in Seattle on Thursday night. An image of the 1975 Popular Electronics magazine that in part inspired the creation of Microsoft is projected behind them. (GeekWire Photo / Kurt Schlosser)
Talk about a double Billing. Bill Nye, the “Science Guy,” and Bill Gates, the software guy, came together on one stage Thursday night in Seattle for an epically geeky conversation.
Over the course of an hour at the Moore Theater, Nye and Gates discussed everything from the Microsoft co-founder’s life-changing early obsession with computers and coding to his current drive toward finding clean energy solutions. The event was part of the promotion around Gates’ new book, “Source Code: My Beginnings.”
“Source Code” is the first book in a planned memoir trilogy from Bill Gates.
Nye, the famed television personality with engineering and entertainment roots in Seattle, peppered Gates with a barrage of questions related to Gates’ upbringing, his schooling at Lakeside in Seattle and then Harvard University, his friendships and early jobs, the start of Microsoft, and what’s come since in Gates’ philanthropic pursuits with the Gates Foundation.
“We could start anywhere, but I’m going to start at the beginning,” Nye said. “You had an extraordinary grandmother, Gammy, and you played cards with her. … And now you changed the course of human history.”
Nye’s humor, sarcasm and a get-a-load-of-THIS-guy style of audience interaction played to Gates’ own deadpan wit, starting with his lack of discipline as a young boy.
“They had arbitrary rules,” Gates said about his parents. “I didn’t think they could explain why or where their authority derived from. They thought because they fed me that there was some inherent slave status.”
Gates said that two years with a therapist, from age 11 to 13, helped work out that need to give his parents a hard time. He buckled down at school and seized on his mathematics prowess. Asked about his perfect score on the SAT, Gates said dryly, “A lot of people get that,” to which an audience full of people, who did not “get that,” laughed.
Keep reading for more highlights from the conversation:
Dumpster diving: Gates and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen would raid the garbage at Digital Equipment Corp. for printed software listings to learn more about how to program a PDP-10 mainframe computer. “I’m in [the garbage] with the coffee grounds, finding these listings,” Gates said. “And slowly but surely, we got the entire operating system listing, which was unbelievable, and fairly cryptic at first. But we’ve got a lot of time on our hands, and we’re obsessed. … I didn’t do sports.”
Playing to a Seattle/UW crowd: Gates mentioned that Allen was ahead of him in school and after finishing a year at Washington State University Allen was “kind of bored.” “Well, it’s WSU, I mean,” Nye said to audience laugher. “I kid! It’s a joke!”
Bill Gates, rear, and Paul Allen at a teletype machine at Lakeside School in Seattle around 1970. (Photo courtesy of Lakeside School)
Leaving Harvard: Allen’s purchase of a 1975 copy of Popular Electronics magazine heralding the arrival of the Altair 8800 and personal computing was the spark that ended Gates’ formal education pursuits. “We’re like, ‘Oh my god, it’s gonna happen. This is it. It’s gonna happen without us,’” Gates said. “I enjoyed Harvard and there were interesting people around. They gave me good grades. But Paul … won the argument. As soon as this [magazine] comes out, I know we got to go. We got to lead this software revolution.”
All the luck: “You had the insight to start a company and to sell software from your software factory — that is amazing,” Nye said. “You were in the perfect place with the perfect ability and the perfect background, and with respect, the perfect parents.” Gates agreed. “The luck is mind blowing, that everything was lined up.”
Billionaire pursuits: Nye’s biggest cheer of the night came when he asked Gates about what Gates was not pursuing. “So, you’re a billionaire. Our society is lousy with them now. But you do not have a rocket company,” Nye said, in reference to Elon Musk’s SpaceX and Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin. “As fascinating as it is to know what’s out there — you know, I watched all that Carl Sagan stuff — the thing that caught my attention was, ‘Why do children die?’” Gates countered in explaining the start of the Gates Foundation and solving problems on Earth. “I think SpaceX is very amazing, this thing where you recover the stages and you lower the cost and all that. But you know, for me, the thing that’s really fulfilling is that millions of children who are now not only surviving, but because of what we’re doing with nutrition, they’re thriving.”
Gates and Trump: Staying on the topic of Musk and his Department of Government Efficiency, Gates revealed that he met again this week with President Trump, and pleaded with Trump to maintain critical polio and HIV work being done by USAID, one of numerous federal agencies being targeted for gutting or shut-down.
Are you experienced? Nye concluded by asking Gates about one sentence in particular in “Source Code” in which Gates wrote,”That was one of the last times I took LSD.” “That was a thing with you?” Nye asked. “Well, Paul … ” Gates began, and as the audience roared Nye seized on ending the discussion right there. “Thank you, Bill!”
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