"unlike Gates". Pardon? As Gates was co-author of Altair Basic, which was Microsoft's first product, I don't understand your comparison. Could you elaborate?
Re:The Brilliance of Dwarf Fortress
by guillaume_a on Saturday July 23, 2011 @06:17PM
(#2797985)
Gates wrote, by himself, the best BAISC interpreter in the industry in a matter of months. At a time where there was no internet to check out the latest papers, StackOverflow to help you out, etc.
Way more impressive than sticking together a few perlscripts for a social networking website. Zuckerberg wasn't the main programmer behind Facebook, btw.
Gates wrote the interpreter along with Paul Allen and Monte Davidoff... while he distinguished himself as a programmer, he's not quite that level of amazing. I get the impression that in a situation similar to (but not as lopsided as) Wozniak and Jobs' arrangement, Allen did a bit more of the technical heavy lifting and Gates planned and arranged the business side.
I'd recommend you read http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html
wherein Joel Spolsky was reviewed by Bill Gates. It is pretty clear the man had serious technical chops.
Perhaps it's an illustration that it's often not fancy maths and algorithms that pay, but rather being in the right place at the right time with the right product. That said, there are instances like Google and Carmack where it really was the algorithms that made the difference.