比尔盖兹和他命定的电脑：自我潜能发掘

课余活动的重要：兴趣培养和才华发掘
（1993年电视采访比尔盖兹摘录）

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DA: Clearly, your extracurricular activity was probably more important in your later development than what you did in class, or at least equally important [Bill laughs].

How do you feel as we look at problems in education, that students that are coming up interested in technical things should balance those. Do you think it is important to explore things on your own at that age?



BG: Self-exploration is great, because you develop a sense of self-confidence and an identity of "Hey, I know this pretty well. I know this better than the teachers. Let me try and see if I can understand at the next level. Maybe I'm pretty good at this stuff."

And particularly with the computer where if your program is wrong, you know you try it and if it doesn't work and then you fix it and try it again. It is kind of a feedback loop, which because the classroom has a lot of people, and maybe there is not a subject that you think you are good at or interested at.

It is just fascinating to try and figure out the computer.

I remember at Computer Center Corporation they had hired in some of the great people of early computer days, including Bob Gruen, Dick Russell, a guy named Weir who was a Stanford guy. Anyway, these guys would kind of loan us deep manuals on the system, just for a few hours and then take them away.

So, we'd spend those few hours just reading carefully. It was so exciting to get a little glimpse and beginning to figure out how computers were built, and why they were expensive.

I certainly think that having some dimension, when you're young, that you feel a mastery of, versus the other people around you is a very positive thing.

And for me that came in several ways: the reading I was doing non-computer related; in Math. But computers, timewise, for many years was a key center of excitement.



(part of the Transcript of a Video History Interview with "Bill" Gates)

Winner of the 1993 Price Waterhouse Leadership Award for Lifetime Achievement, Computerworld Smithsonian Awards, Bill Gates(BG)

interviewer: David Allison (DA)