Computer Programs example essay topic

What does it take to become a cultural icon? Through the perspective of the world today, just a few of the basics might be fame, power, IQ, and enough motivation to utilize it all. But did we forget something? Perhaps. How about all of that, and also enough money and power gobble up any and every company that may stand in your way? This is especially true if you happen to be the CEO of an $18-million company called Microsoft, and even more so if you bare the name "Bill Gates" on your VISA card.

Mr. Gates began his life in Seattle, Washington. He was born on the 28th of October in 1955. Being the middle child in his family, he found himself often working by his lonesome due to his differing interests from his siblings. As a boy, he was sent to Lakeside School; an all-boys prep school.

Seemingly though, not even 40 years ago was the world safe from his genius, being that the school's mini-computer was Bill's primary source of amusement. It was at Lakeside that he first learned how to 'hack' code and write programs. In fact, his first program was not anywhere close the eloquent interfaces of Word 97, Encarta, or Windows. No fancy-shamncy monitor.

Not even a keyboard or mouse. It was a tic-tac-toe game where he and other classmates would flip switches and wait for minutes to get the computer's output. Nonetheless, everyone must begin somewhere, and it was here that it all started. In his later school years, Gates met Paul Allen, and the two co-founded what would eventually become Microsoft. The dynamic duo's first commercially-based job was to write up a program to manage payroll services. This first job worked out so well, that Gates and Allen later formed a pint-sized company called "Traf-O-Data" which studied traffic patterns for small towns around Seattle.

Microsoft was slowly taking it's first baby steps into the technology business. Gates was 19 when he graduated from high school and went on to Harvard. There he kept working with Paul Allen night and day in their dorm room to create one of the first micro-processors that would run the latest in computer technology: software. The computer was known as the MITs Altair, and was the first computer to be accompanied by the BASIC computer programming language, as well as Intel's 8088 8 KHz processor. This revolutionary new technology was the hype of the 1970's because before then, all computer programs were based on switches, vacuum tubes, LEDs, punch cards, and wires running in all directions. Software still required hardware, but could be changed and updated when flaws were found, and only needed some type of mass-storage device (such as a reel-to-reel tape) to capacitate all the 1's and 0's, thus eliminating the need to custom build an electronic board that was meant for only 1 single program.

Gates eventually ended up spending more time in the campus computer labs than in his classes, and in 1975, dropped out of Harvard his junior year to begin Microsoft, which was then known as 'Micro-soft'. On a wing and a prayer, Allen and Gates were guided by the belief that the personal computer would one day be a valuable tool on every office desktop and in every home. Microsoft began developing it's first software titles, but as their software programming techniques progressed, the ran into a common problem that we still face today: obsoleteness. Programs could no longer be run on a hardware basis. They had to find something software-based that could interpret commands to run programs while also providing the user with a certain level of control. An operating system it would be called, and the particular one to chosen was DOS.

DOS stood for "Disk Operating System" (although many illiterates believed the D to stand for "Dumb" due to the lack of user friendliness.) And so, October of 1980, Microsoft bought 'DOS' from starving programmer Tim Patterson in Seattle for a mere $500.00, and began licensing it to IBM for less than $100,000. IBM needed the operating system to run the 70,000 computers they had recently kicked off of the assembly line, and for the time, the price seemed more than a bargain. With that, the company we now know as Microsoft set it's name in stone., and with DOS as a standard in computers, Microsoft raked in $81 million in it's first 3 years. In 1982 Paul Allen left Microsoft corporation after being diagnosed with Hodgkin's Disease. Even so, Microsoft was still making an unbelievable $200 million on products each year.

Gates did not let the money overwhelm him though. He would still eat fast food and travel coach class as if he were the normal Joe-Blow. After all, he's only human. So if he's only human, how come he's so much wealthier than everyone else? The shortest and simplest answer to this, as quoted by Microsoft employee Mike Maples, is "Bill is just smarter than everyone else.

There are probably more smart people per square foot right here [at Microsoft] than anywhere else in the world, but Bill is just smarter". (Why Bill Gates is Richer than You) But as he is smart, he's also the kind of person that isn't going to explain everything twice. Another Microsoft employee says that "Gates is a remarkable piece of software in his own right. He is childishly awkward at times, throws things when angry, and fidgets uncontrollably when he speaks.

But he is an extraordinarily intelligent master programmer steeped in technical knowledge about his complicated business. At the same time, he is monstrously competitive.".