My mother started about 20 years before that. Back then, even assembler wasn't an option - programming directly in machine code in binary. Fun.
Programming takes more experience than talent. I'm sure that Bill started off pretty bad at programming - but people like Paul Allen would "rub off on him". I think that since Bill had the talent for making deals, he separated from the technical day-to-day stuff to concentrate on marketing. Which of course suited him best . . .
I remember reading a comment about Bill Gates's programming - to the effect that it was bad. A quick Google shows this:
http://www.pcw.co.uk/computing/analysis/2074676/cash-chaos-inside-microsoft
I'm not sure if that has been verified though...
Certainly I agree that Bill's talents were not best spent on programming.
With regards to "Programming takes more experience than talent", I'd say BOTH are important to become a good programmer. Unfortunately, dumb programmers can survive in the commercial world, so you can have experianced but poor programmers. Of course, even someone naturally suited to programming starts out poor, and I haven't seen a university course that can churn out good programmers.
Personally, I think that a good programmer needs to be good at thinking in abstract ways, good at being creative, good at thinking logically / precisely, and to have a good memory. If you have all that (which I'd say well under 1% of people do), then with some experiance you'll probably get good.
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