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    @AndréParamés: Read Susan Lammers' Programmers at Work and you'll get a pretty good idea of Gates' abilities as a programmer. He was great at squeezing performance and space in 8-bit assembly language. The last piece of code he wrote all by himself was the ROM BASIC for the TRS-80 Model 100, again in hand-optimized Z80 code. His skills may be dated but there's no doubt he had them. Commented Jul 4, 2013 at 16:00
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    The Gates quote is about productivity, and doesn't really bear on this question much. It's a response to those that measure "productivity" with something silly like "lines of code produced per hour" and is thus arguing against those who (implicitly) thing more lines of code is automatically better. Commented Jul 5, 2013 at 4:30
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    @AndréParamés: Even if Bill Gates was not a good programmer itself, he obviously knows how to lead a large group of programmers so that they create this kind of software he likes. Thus, I think one can conclude he knows how "good" software looks like. Commented Jul 5, 2013 at 11:15
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    @StevenBurnap His point is that everyone knows a lighter aircraft is better, but only if all other factors are identical. The analogy is easily as appropriate for on-going operational costs involved in both, as it is for progress during construction. Commented Jul 6, 2013 at 15:52