&quot;Code reviews&quot; makes it sound like something he did for 15 minutes as part of a standup. He was known to be incredibly sharp, asking extremely detailed questions.<p><a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.joelonsoftware.com&#x2F;items&#x2F;2006&#x2F;06&#x2F;16.html" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.joelonsoftware.com&#x2F;items&#x2F;2006&#x2F;06&#x2F;16.html</a><p>&quot;Bill Gates was amazingly technical. He understood Variants, and COM objects, and IDispatch and why Automation is different than vtables and why this might lead to dual interfaces. He worried about date functions. He didn&#x27;t meddle in software if he trusted the people who were working on it, but you couldn&#x27;t bullshit him for a minute because he was a programmer. A real, actual, programmer.&quot;<p>Edit: My point is, one can love computers and be very good at them without making significant contributions to the field. That describes me and probably most of the people on HN.