retirement

First I have never been a big fan of Bill Gates, he has always been on the other team. So I should be glad that he is retiring and moving on but somehow I just don’t feel it. I have had heated shouting battles about this man who I have never met. Yet now there is this empty feeling. I will not say that Mr. Gates is not or was not a great programmer, for what he programmed. I think that getting BASIC up and running on the Altair was a great idea and kudos to him for doing it, it can be credited that this is what really got him going and the help from Paul Allen. Later being a little snot for claiming everyone was stealing his BASIC is why he is the man we love to hate. He is/was a worthy adversary. He even seems to have made working at Microsoft fairly interesting. I trust Joel Spolsky’s opinion on this.I feel like I wish I had more time to compete I haven’t gotten fully entrenched, I needed more time, he is just leaving the game. So while I don’t care for his companies products or business practices, I will miss him being in the industry. There would be many a blank page in the computer history books and the Pirates of Silicon Valley not be as great. (Note to self go watch that again for the nth time.) The way I am talking you’d think the man was dead. Now this is sounding all mushy so I will stop. I wish him the best in his new full-time philanthropy.