Free Hard Drive: Bill Gates and the Making of the Microsoft Empire by Erickson wallace

as possible. “Paul, it’s our chance to finally make some real money! We gotta do it.”
    Paul Allen didn’t need any coaxing. Although he was only in his second year at Washington State University, Allen was weary of college life, and restless. He wanted to get out in the real world, apply what he knew about computers, and make some money. Perhaps he and Bill might form their own software company. They had talked about doing just that many times.
    Up to now the payback from their business ventures had been mostly in the form of free computer time, first at C-Cubed and then at Information Sciences. But TRW offered a full-time job with a salary.
    The giant government defense contractor was in trouble. TRW was in the midst of a project to computerize the Bonneville
    Power Administration’s power grid for the Northwest. Computers would analyze the power needs of the region and control the amount of electricity generated by hydroelectric dams on the Columbia River. TRW had set up offices in Vancouver, across the Columbia River from Portland. The power-monitoring system would use several PDP-10 computers, and TRW was to write the software. But the project soon fell behind schedule. As usual, the PDP-10 software was infested with bugs. The contract called for a real-time control system with 99.9 percent reliability; if TRW couldn’t get the software problems fixed, and soon, it would have to pay substantial contract penalties.
    It was time to call in the exterminators.
    An urgent request was made from TRW’s headquarters in Cleveland for bug-hunting experts with PDP-10 software. Following a lead from Digital Equipment Corporation, a TRW technician discovered the Problem Report Book at the bankrupt Computer Center Corporation in Seattle. The names of two bug hunters appeared on nearly every page—Bill Gates and Paul Allen. TRW contacted Gates by phone at his home, suggesting he and Allen come down to Vancouver for an interview.
    “Bill and I went down there dressed in the best suits we could find,” Allen said.
    Despite their youth, Gates and Allen were offered jobs, at $165 a week.
    “We were just thrilled,” Allen said. “Up to that point, we had never been paid real money for doing anything on a computer. ... To get paid for something we loved doing ... we thought that was great.”
    Instead of crashing the PDP-10 as they had done at C- Cubed, they were hired to work on restoring the system when it did crash.
    Gates received permission from Lakeside to miss the second trimester of his senior year so he could work full-time at TRW. Allen dropped out of Washington State University, and the two found an apartment in Vancouver, 160 miles from Seattle.
    It was at TRW that Gates began to develop as a serious computer programmer. Computer programming is more of an art than a science. The best programmers have a style as recognizable to other programmers as the brush stroke of a great painter. Gates fancies himself a master programmer, although today he hasn’t written code in years because he’s too busy running his company.
    There were several top-notch programmers on the TRW project. One of the best was John Norton. He liked to write endless memos commenting on a programmer’s code. It was the first time Gates had seen anyone respond that way before, and it left a lasting impression. To this day, Gates sends his own electronic memos to his programmers at Microsoft, commenting on their codes. Often they are critical and sarcastic. More than one unlucky programmer at Microsoft has received E-mail at 2:00 a.m. that began, “This is the stupidest piece of code ever written.”
    Norton liked Gates and became something of a mentor, helping the intense, inquisitive teenager hone his programming skills. Whenever Gates made a mistake or did sloppy work, Norton would review his code and explain what he had done wrong or how he could do it better and more efficiently.
    There was, however, still the matter of finishing high