Mary Whitfill Roeloffs Forbes Staff Mary Roeloffs is a Forbes breaking news reporter covering pop culture.

Did you know Bill Gates was one of a few people who could program the University of Washington’s PDP-10, CDC 6400 and the Burroughs 5500 mainframe computers at Computer Center Corporation (CCC) with punch cards!

Billionaire Microsoft founder Bill Gates is opening up about his “lucky” early childhood, his years “getting hooked on coding” and his belief that, if we grew up today, he’d probably be diagnosed as “on the autism spectrum” as he promotes the release of his memoir next month—also commenting on more recent issues like his divorce.

Key Facts

“Source Code: My Beginnings” is the first of three planned personal memoirs by Gates and will cover his early life and the formation of Microsoft through the late 1970s, when the company signed its first deal with Apple.

The Wall Street Journal published an extensive excerpt from the book in which Gates describes his teenage years taking “expeditions” through the mountains around Seattle with his friends, writing computer code for a PDP-8 machine on loan to his high school and the “lucky timing” that saw him born at the right time and under the right circumstances to succeed.

He also reflected on how he would become obsessed with certain projects, miss social cues and “could be rude and inappropriate without seeming to notice” how it impacted others—traits he equated to what is now called neurodivergence and said, if he was growing up today, “I probably would be diagnosed on the autism spectrum.”

He said in an interview with The Times of London there were conversations in his early school years that he might be “retarted” and he was threatened with being held back, but that he “needed my neurodiversity” to write the software that would later lead to Microsoft.

In an interview with BBC News, he added he thinks neurodiversity is “certainly” over-represented in Silicon Valley, explaining he thinks it can help understand “certain complex subjects.”

While promoting the book with The Times, Gates took a more comprehensive view of his life, reflecting on his time at Harvard, his marriage and the guiding principles he learned from his strong family life.

He calls the death of his best friend and first business partner, Kent Evans, at 17 years old “the only negative thing that happened to me,” and credits strong female role models like his mother and maternal grandmother with giving him the competitive drive that pushed him to succeed.

Forbes Valuation

Gates is worth an estimated $107.8 billion Tuesday, making him the 13th richest person in the world. Melinda French Gates is worth an estimated $30.4 billion, ranking her No. 60 on Forbes’ real-time billionaires list.

What To Watch For

“Source Code: My Beginnings” will be published Feb. 4. The next two memoirs will cover his years at Microsoft and his philanthropy, respectively, but release dates have not been announced.

Crucial Quote

“In the book, I share some of the tougher parts of my early life… But throughout it, you’ll also find the stories of the many people who believed in me, pushed me to grow and helped me turn my quirks into strengths,” Gates said of “Source Code: My Beginnings.”

What Did Bill Gates Say About His Divorce With Melinda French Gates?

In his interview with The Times, Gates calls the end of his 27-year marriage to Melinda Gates “the mistake I most regret.” “Source Code” isn’t expected to delve into his marriage or 202q divorce, but he spoke to The Times about his family structure and said it was his relationship that “kept me grounded.” He said he strived to replicate the 45-year marriage of his own parents and that he and Melinda were always a good match, noting that she would push him to tune into family life when he was distant or distracted. He said he would could their divorce as his biggest failure and that “there are others, but none that matter.”

What Did Bill Gates Say About Elon Musk?

In his interview with The Times as part of his book promotion, Gates said he doesn’t like the comparisons that have been drawn between himself and Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, who is now the richest man in the world and spends much of his time and money influencing global politics. Musk, who owns the social media platform X, previously known as Twitter, spent a quarter of a billion dollars getting now-President Donald Trump elected and has weighed in on the political issues of foreign countries, particularly in the United Kingdom. Gates called Musk’s online feuds with foreign leaders “insane s—” and called his behavior “populist stirring.” “It’s difficult to understand why someone who has a car factory in both China and in Germany, whose rocket business is ultra-dependent on relationships with sovereign nations and who is busy cutting $2 trillion in US government expenses and running five companies, is obsessing about this grooming story in the U.K.,” Gates said of Musk. “I’m like, what?”

What Did Bill Gates Say About Social Media?

Gates was skeptical of social media’s impact on everyday life in more than one of his recent interviews—criticizing how easy it is to “waste away” hours of valuable time and how giants like Mark Zuckerberg’s Facebook and Musk’s X have handling issues of fact checking and free speech. He told The Times that social media networks allow “non-factual things to achieve critical mass,” adding he is “very disappointed that neither governments nor companies seem to be fixing or improving these things.” To the BBC, he said he’s not “that impressed” with the way governments and private companies are navigating the boundaries between free speech and truth online, supported an Australian ban that bans children under the age of 16 from accessing social media.

What Did Bill Gates Say About Trump? Read more At Forbes.com