Even when I wrote Basic myself the day before I burned it into a computer I wasn't making design changes. I didn't have a testing team. I did all the testing myself. And there was no project methodology or schedule that, there was the notion of coming to a close means testing a lot at the end and making very few changes.

(On being the world's richest man) I wish I wasn't ... There's nothing good that comes out of that. You get more visibility as a result of it.

Software is definitely engineering. It's different in that we take on novel tasks every time. It's not like building a certain bridge that is virtually identical to some previous bridge or some previous building.

The idea that you encourage companies to take their innovative thinkers and think about the most needy - even beyond the market opportunities - that's something that appropriately ought to be done.

Your school may have done away with winners and losers, but life HAS NOT. In some schools they have abolished failing grades and they'll give you as MANY TIMES as you want to get the right answer. This doesn't bear the slightest resemblance to ANYTHING in real life.

I think we knew that this would be just like raising the kids together, this would be a fun thing to do in partnership. And you know, we're so lucky because we get to hire in very smart people. We get to partner with governments like the Canadian Development Organization - CIDA, USAID - tonnes of scientists doing this work. This is fascinating.

You can go overboard in how quickly you might expect new technologies to transform people's lives. But I very much believe the way software is used, the way information gets distributed, will be dramatically different within 10 years. There is fire to go with all this smoke.