2025-01-24 Bill Gates.I Coded While I Hiked as a Teenager. Was I on the Spectrum? Probably.
When I was around 13, I started hanging out with a group of boys who met up for regular long hikes in the mountains around Seattle. We got to know each other as Boy Scouts. We did plenty of hiking and camping with our troop, but we very quickly formed a sort of splinter group that went on our own expeditions—and that’s how we thought of them, as expeditions. We wanted more freedom and more risk than the trips the Scouts offered.
大约在我13岁的时候，我开始和一群男孩一起在西雅图周围的山区进行定期的长途徒步旅行。我们是通过参加童子军认识的。我们和队伍一起进行了很多徒步和露营活动，但很快就形成了一个小分队，自己组织探险旅行——我们把这些旅行当作探险。我们想要比童子军提供的旅行更多的自由和风险。
There were usually five of us—Mike, Rocky, Reilly, Danny and me. Mike was the leader; he was a few years older than the rest of us and had vastly more outdoor experience.
我们通常有五个人——迈克、洛基、赖利、丹尼和我。迈克是领队，他比我们其他人年长几岁，而且拥有丰富的户外经验。
Over the course of three years or so we hiked hundreds of miles together. We covered the Olympic National Forest west of Seattle and Glacier Peak Wilderness to the northeast and did hikes along the Pacific Coast. We’d often go for seven days or more at a stretch, guided only by topographic maps through old-growth forests and rocky beaches where we tried to time the tides as we hustled around points.
在大约三年的时间里，我们一起徒步走了数百英里。我们探访了西雅图以西的奥林匹克国家森林、东北的冰川峰荒野区，还沿着太平洋海岸徒步旅行。我们经常连续出行七天甚至更久，仅依靠地形图穿越原始森林和多岩石的海滩，并尝试在潮水变化间隙抓紧时间绕过海岬。
During school breaks, we’d take off on extended trips, hiking and camping in all weather, which in the Pacific Northwest often meant a week of soaked, itchy Army surplus wool pants and pruney toes. We weren’t doing technical climbing. No ropes or slings or sheer rock faces. Just long, hard hikes. It wasn’t dangerous beyond the fact that we were teenagers deep in the mountains, many hours from help and well before cellphones were a thing.
在学校假期期间，我们会进行更长时间的旅行，无论天气如何都进行徒步和露营。在太平洋西北地区，这通常意味着穿着潮湿发痒的军用羊毛裤度过一周，还有被泡得皱巴巴的脚趾。我们并没有进行技术性的攀登，没有绳索、吊索或陡峭的岩壁。只是长途而艰苦的徒步。危险并不多，除了我们是身处深山的青少年，离救援有好几个小时的路程，而且那时还没有手机这种东西。
Making our own decisions
做出我们自己的决定
Over time we grew into a confident, tightknit team. We’d finish a full day of hiking, decide upon a place to camp, and with hardly a word we’d all fall into our jobs. Mike and Rocky might tie up the tarp that would be our roof. Danny foraged the undergrowth for dry wood, and Reilly and I coaxed a starter stick and twigs into our fire for the night.
随着时间的推移，我们成长为一支自信且团结的团队。一天的徒步结束后，我们会决定一个露营地点，几乎不需要多说话，每个人就各自投入到自己的任务中。迈克和洛基可能会搭建充当屋顶的防水布，丹尼在灌木丛中寻找干燥的木材，而赖利和我会用点火棒和树枝引燃我们当晚的篝火。
喜欢做一件事是因为足够投入，因为足够投入所以喜欢，循环印证，进入循环就成功了，进不去也就完了。
And then we ate. Cheap food that was light in our packs but substantial enough to fuel us through the trip. Nothing ever tasted better. For dinner we’d chop up a brick of Spam and mix it with Hamburger Helper or a packet of beef stroganoff mix. In the morning, we might have Carnation Instant Breakfast mix or a powder that with water transformed into a Western omelet, at least according to the package. My morning favorite: Oscar Mayer Smokie Links, a sausage billed as “all meat,” now extinct.
然后我们吃饭。简单的食物，重量轻，适合背包携带，却足够为我们的旅途提供能量。没有什么比这更美味了。晚餐时，我们会切开一块午餐肉，混入汉堡伴侣或一包牛肉炖肉调味粉。早餐可能是雀巢即饮早餐粉，或者一种与水混合后据包装所称能变成西式煎蛋的粉末。我最喜欢的早餐是奥斯卡·梅耶烟熏香肠，一种标榜为“全肉”的香肠，如今已绝迹。
We used a single frying pan to prepare most of the food, and we ate out of empty #10 coffee cans we each carried. Those cans were our water pails, our saucepans, our oatmeal bowls. I don’t know who among us invented the hot raspberry drink. Not that it was a great culinary innovation: just add instant Jell-O mix to boiling water and drink. It worked as dessert or as a morning sugar boost before a day of hiking.
我们用一口煎锅来准备大部分食物，每个人随身携带的10号空咖啡罐则是我们的水桶、炖锅和麦片碗。我不知道我们中是谁发明了热覆盆子饮料。当然这算不上什么伟大的烹饪创新：只需将速溶果冻粉加入沸水即可饮用。这种饮料既可以当作甜点，也可以在徒步前的早晨提供糖分补给。
We were away from our parents and the control of any adults, making our own decisions about where to go, what to eat, when we slept, judging for ourselves what risks to take. At school, none of us were the cool children. Only Danny played an organized sport—basketball—and he soon quit to make time for our hikes.
我们远离父母和任何成年人的控制，自己决定去哪里，吃什么，什么时候睡觉，并自己判断应该承担哪些风险。在学校，我们都不是那种受欢迎的孩子。只有丹尼参加过一项有组织的运动——篮球，但他很快就放弃了，以腾出时间参加我们的徒步旅行。
I was the skinniest of the group and usually the coldest, and I always felt like I was weaker than the others. Still, I liked the physical challenge and the feeling of autonomy. Though hiking was becoming popular in our part of the country, not a lot of teenagers were traipsing off in the woods for eight days on their own.
我是队伍中最瘦的，通常也是最容易感到寒冷的，而且我总觉得自己比其他人弱一些。尽管如此，我喜欢这种身体上的挑战和自主的感觉。虽然徒步旅行在我们所在的地区正变得流行，但很少有青少年独自一人在树林中跋涉八天。
Adventures in computing
计算中的冒险
That said, it was the 1970s, and attitudes toward parenting were looser than they are today. Children generally had more freedom. And by the time I was in my early teens, my parents had accepted that I was different from many of my peers and had come to terms with the fact that I needed a certain amount of independence in making my way through the world. That acceptance had been hard-won—especially from my mother—but it would play a defining part in who I was to become.
话虽如此，那是20世纪70年代，人们对育儿的态度比现在宽松得多。孩子们通常拥有更多的自由。当我刚进入青春期时，我的父母已经接受了我与许多同龄人不同的事实，并且也接受了我需要一定的独立性来应对生活的现实。这种接受来之不易——尤其是来自我的母亲——但它对我未来的发展起到了决定性的作用。
问题很可能出在这里，相比于乔布斯，比尔·盖茨被干预的更多。
Looking back now, I’m sure all of us were searching for something on those trips beyond camaraderie and a sense of accomplishment. We were at that age when children test their limits, experiment with different identities—and sometimes feel a yearning for bigger, even transcendent experiences. I had started to feel a clear longing to figure out what my path would be. I wasn’t sure what direction it would take, but it had to be something interesting and consequential.
现在回想起来，我确信我们所有人在那些旅行中寻找的不仅仅是友谊和成就感。我们正处于那个孩子们测试自己极限、尝试不同身份的年龄——有时还会感到一种对更大、更超然体验的渴望。我开始感到一种清晰的渴望，想要弄清楚自己的道路会是什么。我不知道它会走向哪个方向，但它必须是有趣且意义重大的。
Also in those years, I was spending a lot of time with a different group of boys. Kent, Paul, Ric and I all went to the same private school, Lakeside, which had set up a way for students to connect with a big mainframe computer over a phone line. It was incredibly rare back then for teenagers to have access to a computer in any form. The four of us really took to it, devoting all of our free time to writing increasingly more sophisticated programs and exploring what we could do with that electronic machine.
也是在那些年里，我花了很多时间和另一个群体的男孩们在一起。肯特、保罗、里克和我都就读于同一所私立学校——湖滨学校。学校为学生们提供了一种通过电话线连接大型主机计算机的方法。在那个年代，青少年能够以任何形式接触计算机都极为罕见。我们四个人都深深迷上了它，把所有的空闲时间都投入到编写日益复杂的程序中，探索我们可以用这台电子机器做些什么。
On the surface, the difference between hiking and programming couldn’t have been greater. But each felt like an adventure. With both sets of friends I was exploring new worlds, traveling to places even most adults couldn’t reach. Like hiking, programming fit me because it allowed me to define my own measure of success, and it seemed limitless, not determined by how fast I could run or how far I could throw.
表面上看，徒步旅行和编程之间的差异再大不过了。但两者都让我感到像是一场冒险。与这两群朋友在一起，我都在探索新的世界，去到许多成年人都无法企及的地方。与徒步旅行一样，编程之所以适合我，是因为它让我能够定义自己的成功标准，并且它看起来是无限的，而不是取决于我跑得多快或扔得多远。
The logic, focus and stamina needed to write long, complicated programs came naturally to me. Unlike in hiking, among that group of friends, I was the leader.
编写冗长、复杂的程序所需的逻辑、专注力和耐力对我来说是自然而然的。 与徒步旅行不同，在那群朋友中，我是领导者。
更擅长=更喜欢。
No turning back
没有回头路
Toward the end of my sophomore year, in June 1971, Mike called me with our next trip: 50 miles in the Olympic Mountains. The route he chose was called the Press Expedition Trail, after a group sponsored by a newspaper that had explored the area in 1890. Did he mean the same trip on which the men nearly starved to death and their clothes rotted on their bodies? Yes, but that was a long time ago, he said.
在我高二快结束的时候，也就是1971年6月，迈克打电话告诉我我们的下一个行程：奥林匹克山脉的50英里徒步。他选择的路线叫“新闻探险队小道”，以1890年一支由报纸资助的探险队命名。我问他是不是指那次探险中人们差点饿死，衣服都在身上腐烂的那次？他说是的，但那是很久以前的事了。
Eight decades later it would still be a tough hike. That year had brought a lot of snow, so it was a particularly daunting proposition. But since everyone else—Rocky, Reilly and Danny—was up for it, there was no way I was going to wimp out. Plus, a younger Scout, a guy named Chip, was game. I had to go.
八十年后，这仍然是一条艰难的徒步路线。那一年下了很多雪，因此这个计划格外令人望而却步。但既然其他人——洛基、赖利和丹尼——都准备好了，我绝不可能退缩。再加上一个更年轻的童子军，一个叫奇普的男孩也想参加。我必须去。
The plan was to climb the Low Divide pass, descend to the Quinault River, and then hike the same trail back, staying each night in log shelters along the way. Six or seven days total. The first day was easy, and we spent the night in a beautiful snow-covered meadow.
计划是先翻越洛迪瓦德山口，下降到奎诺尔特河，然后沿着同一条小道徒步返回，每晚住在路上的木屋里。总共六到七天。第一天很轻松，我们在一个美丽的雪地草甸中过夜。
Over the next day or two, as we climbed the Low Divide, the snow got deeper. When we reached the spot where we planned to spend the night, the shelter was buried in snow. I enjoyed a moment of private elation. Surely, I thought, we’d backtrack, head down to a far more welcoming shelter we passed earlier in the day. We’d make a fire, get warm and eat.
接下来的两天里，当我们攀登洛迪瓦德山口时，积雪变得越来越深。当我们到达计划过夜的地点时，避难所已经被雪掩埋了。我暗自感到一阵欣喜。我想，我们肯定会折返，下到当天早些时候经过的那个更舒适的避难所。我们可以生火，取暖，吃东西。
不擅长=不那么喜欢。
Mike said we’d take a vote: head back or push on to our final destination. Either choice meant a several-hour hike. “We passed a shelter at the bottom; it’s 1,800 feet down. We could go back down and stay there, or we could continue on to the Quinault River,” Mike said. He didn’t need to spell out that going back meant aborting our mission to reach the river.
迈克说我们需要投票决定：是折返还是继续前往最终目的地。这两种选择都意味着需要徒步好几个小时。“我们刚才经过了山下的一个避难所；那里在海拔1,800英尺下方。我们可以回到那里过夜，或者继续前往奎诺尔特河，”迈克说。他不需要明说，大家都知道回去意味着放弃抵达河边的目标。
“What do you think, Dan?” Mike asked. Danny was the unofficial second in command in our little group. He was taller than everyone and a very capable hiker with long legs that never seemed to tire. Whatever he said would sway the vote.
“丹尼，你怎么看？”迈克问。丹尼是我们这个小团体的非正式副手。他比其他人都高，是一个非常出色的徒步者，拥有永远似乎不会疲惫的长腿。他的意见会对投票结果产生很大影响。
“Well, we’re almost there, maybe we should just go on” Danny said. As the hands went up, it was clear I was in the minority. We’d push on.
“嗯，我们已经快到了，也许我们应该继续前进，”丹尼说。当大家举手表决时，很明显我是少数派。我们决定继续前进。
A few minutes down the trail I said, “Danny, I’m not happy with you. You could have stopped this.” I was joking—sort of.
在继续前行的几分钟后，我说：“丹尼，我对你很不满。你本可以阻止这一切。”我在开玩笑——但不完全是。
A coding puzzle on the trail
小径上的编码谜题
I remember this trip for how cold and miserable I felt that day. I also remember it for what I did next. I retreated into my own thoughts. I pictured computer code.
我记得这次旅行，因为那一天我感到寒冷而痛苦。我也记得那之后我做了什么。我躲进了自己的思绪中，脑海中浮现出计算机代码的画面。
Around that time, someone had lent Lakeside a computer called a PDP-8, made by Digital Equipment Corp. This was 1971, and while I was deep into the nascent world of computers, I had never seen anything like it. Up until then, my friends and I had used only huge mainframe computers that were simultaneously shared with other people. We usually connected to them over a phone line or else they were locked in a separate room.
大约在那个时候，有人借给湖滨学校一台由数字设备公司生产的PDP-8计算机。那是1971年，尽管我已经深深涉足了刚刚兴起的计算机领域，但我从未见过类似的东西。在那之前，我和朋友们只用过那些供多人同时使用的大型主机计算机。我们通常通过电话线与它们连接，或者它们被锁在一个单独的房间里。
But the PDP-8 was designed to be used directly by one person and was small enough to sit on the desk next to you. It was probably the closest thing in its day to the personal computers that would be common a decade or so later—though one that weighed 80 pounds and cost $8,500. For a challenge, I decided I would try to write a version of the Basic programming language for the new computer.
但PDP-8是为一个人直接使用设计的，并且小到可以放在桌子旁边。这可能是那个时代最接近个人电脑的东西了，大约十年后个人电脑才会普及——尽管它重达80磅，售价8500美元。作为一个挑战，我决定尝试为这台新计算机编写一个Basic编程语言的版本。
Before the hike I was working on the part of the program that would tell the computer the order in which it should perform operations when someone inputs an equation, such as 3 (2 + 5) x 8 − 3, or wants to create a game that requires complex math. In programming that feature is called a formula evaluator.
在徒步旅行之前，我正在编写程序的一部分，它可以告诉计算机在输入一个方程（比如3 (2 + 5) x 8 − 3）或创建一个需要复杂数学运算的游戏时，应该按什么顺序执行操作。在编程中，这个功能被称为公式计算器。
Trudging along with my eyes on the ground in front of me, I worked on my evaluator, puzzling through the steps needed to perform the operations. Small was key. Computers back then had very little memory, which meant programs had to be lean, written using as little code as possible so as not to hog memory. The PDP-8 had just six kilobytes of the memory a computer uses to store data that it’s working on.
拖着步子前行，我的目光集中在脚下，同时思考着我的公式计算器，逐步推敲如何实现这些运算。精简是关键。当时的计算机内存非常有限，这意味着程序必须非常精炼，用尽可能少的代码完成任务，以免占用过多内存。PDP-8仅有6千字节的内存来存储正在处理的数据。
I’d picture the code and then try to trace how the computer would follow my commands. The rhythm of walking helped me think, much like a habit I had of rocking in place.
我会在脑海中构思代码，然后尝试追踪计算机如何执行我的指令。行走的节奏帮助我思考，就像我平时站在原地摇晃时的习惯一样。
For the rest of that day my mind was immersed in my coding puzzle. As we descended to the valley floor, the snow gave way to a gently sloping trail through an old forest of spruce and fir trees until we reached the river, set up camp, ate our Spam Stroganoff and finally slept.
那天剩下的时间里，我的思绪都沉浸在编程难题中。当我们下降到山谷底部时，积雪逐渐被平缓的小路取代，穿过了一片古老的云杉和冷杉森林，直到我们到达河边，扎营、吃了午餐肉炖牛肉后终于入睡。
By early the next morning we were climbing back up the Low Divide in heavy wind and sleet that whipped sideways in our faces. We stopped under a tree long enough to share a sleeve of Ritz crackers and continued. Every camp we found was full of other hikers waiting out the storm. So we just kept going, adding more hours to an interminable day.
第二天一早，我们在狂风和斜打在脸上的雨夹雪中重新爬上洛迪瓦德山口。我们在一棵树下停留了一会儿，分吃了一管丽兹饼干后继续前行。我们找到的每个营地都挤满了避风暴的徒步者。所以我们只能继续走，这让本就漫长的一天变得更加无尽。
Crossing a stream, Chip fell and gashed his knee. Mike cleaned the wound and applied butterfly bandages; now we moved only as fast as Chip limped. All the while, I silently honed my code. I hardly spoke a word during the 20 miles we hiked that day. Eventually we came to a shelter that had room for us and set up camp.
穿过一条小溪时，奇普摔倒并划伤了膝盖。迈克清理了伤口并贴上了蝴蝶绷带；从那以后，我们的速度只能跟上奇普一瘸一拐的步伐。一路上，我默默地打磨我的代码。在那一天的20英里徒步中，我几乎一言未发。最终，我们找到了一处有空位的避难所并扎下营地。
Efficient and pleasingly simple
高效且令人愉悦的简单
Like the famous line “I would have written a shorter letter, but I did not have the time,” it’s easier to write a program in sloppy code that goes on for pages than to write the same program on a single page. The sloppy version will also run more slowly and use more memory. Over the course of that hike, I had the time to write short.
就像那句著名的话“我本可以写一封更短的信，但我没时间”一样，用冗长的代码写一个程序比用简短的代码实现同样的功能要容易得多。而冗长的版本运行起来也会更慢，占用更多的内存。在那次徒步旅行中，我有足够的时间去编写精炼的代码。
On that long day I slimmed it down more, like whittling little pieces off a stick to sharpen the point. What I made seemed efficient and pleasingly simple. It was by far the best code I had ever written.
在那漫长的一天里，我进一步将代码精简，就像从一根木棍上削去小片以磨尖它一样。我编写的代码显得高效且令人满意地简洁。这是迄今为止我写过的最好的代码。
As we made our way back to the trailhead the next afternoon, the rain finally gave way to clear skies and the warmth of sunlight. I felt the elation that always hit me after a hike, when all the hard work was behind me.
当我们第二天下午返回徒步起点时，雨终于停了，晴空和阳光的温暖取而代之。我感受到徒步旅行结束后总会涌上的喜悦感，因为所有的辛劳都已过去。
By the time school started again in the fall, whoever had lent us the PDP-8 had reclaimed it. I never finished my Basic project. But the code I wrote on that hike, my formula evaluator—and its beauty—stayed with me.
到了秋天开学时，那位借给我们PDP-8的人已经收回了它。我从未完成我的Basic项目。但那次徒步旅行中我编写的公式计算器代码及其简洁的美感，一直留在我的心中。
Three and a half years later, I was a sophomore in college not sure of my path in life when Paul Allen, one of my Lakeside friends, burst into my dorm room with news of a groundbreaking computer. I knew we could write a Basic language for it; we had a head start.
三年半后，我在大学读二年级，仍然对人生的道路感到迷茫时，我的湖滨学校朋友之一保罗·艾伦闯进我的宿舍，带来了关于一台革命性计算机的消息。我知道我们可以为它编写一个Basic语言；我们已经有了领先的起步。
The first thing I did was to think back to that miserable day on the Low Divide and retrieve from my memory the evaluator code I had written. I typed it into a computer, and with that planted the seed of what would become one of the world’s largest companies and the beginning of a new industry.
我做的第一件事就是回想起在洛迪瓦德山口那个艰难的日子，从记忆中找回我写下的公式计算器代码。我把它输入到计算机中，这一举动种下了一个种子，这个种子将发展成全球最大的公司之一，同时开启了一个新兴行业的起点。
A lucky kid
一个幸运的孩子
Often success stories reduce people to stock characters: the boy wonder, the genius engineer, the iconoclastic designer, the paradoxical tycoon. In my case, I’m struck by the set of unique circumstances—mostly out of my control—that shaped both my character and my career. It’s impossible to overstate the unearned privilege I enjoyed. To be born in the rich U.S. is a big part of a winning birth-lottery ticket, as is being born white and male in a society that advantages white men.
成功故事往往将人简化为固定的形象：神童、天才工程师、标新立异的设计师、矛盾的巨富。在我的案例中，我深刻感受到一系列独特的环境——大多不受我控制——塑造了我的性格和职业生涯。无法夸大我享受过的特权。出生在富裕的美国就是一张赢得人生彩票的重要部分，出生为一个男性白人也是在有利于白人男性的社会中的巨大优势。
Add to that my lucky timing. I was a rebellious toddler when engineers figured out how to integrate tiny circuits on a piece of silicon, giving birth to the semiconductor chip. I was in grade school when another engineer predicted those circuits would grow smaller and smaller at an exponential rate for years into the future. By the time I started programming at age 13, chips were storing data inside the large computers to which we had uncommon access, and by the time I got my driver’s license, the main functions of an entire computer could be fit onto a single chip.
再加上我幸运的时代背景。当工程师们发明将微小电路集成到一块硅片上、从而诞生半导体芯片时，我还是个叛逆的小孩。当另一位工程师预测这些电路将在未来几年以指数速度变得越来越小时，我还在上小学。当我13岁开始编程时，芯片已经在我们稀有接触的大型计算机中存储数据，而等到我拿到驾照时，一台完整计算机的主要功能已经可以放到一个单一芯片上。
Realizing early on that I had a head for math was a critical step in my story. In his terrific book How Not to Be Wrong, mathematician Jordan Ellenberg observes that “knowing mathematics is like wearing a pair of X-ray specs that reveal hidden structures underneath the messy and chaotic surface of the world.”
很早就意识到我对数学有天赋是我故事中的关键一步。在数学家乔丹·艾伦伯格的精彩著作《如何不犯错》中，他指出：“掌握数学就像戴上了一副X光眼镜，可以揭示世界混乱表面下隐藏的结构。”
Those X-ray specs helped me identify the order underlying the chaos and reinforced my sense that the correct answer was always out there—I just needed to find it. That insight came at one of the most formative times of a kid’s life, when the brain is transforming into a more specialized and efficient tool. Facility with numbers gave me confidence and even a sense of security.
这种“X光眼镜”帮助我在混乱中发现秩序，并强化了我对“正确答案始终存在”的信念——我只需要找到它。这种洞察力出现在儿童生活中一个极具塑造力的阶段，那时大脑正在转变为更专业、更高效的工具。数字上的天赋给了我信心，甚至带来了安全感。
I spent a rare vacation in my early 30s watching films of the late Richard Feynman teaching physics to university students. I was instantly captivated by the absolute mastery he had of his topic and the childlike wonder he showed in explaining it.
在我30岁出头的一次难得的假期里，我看了已故物理学家理查德·费曼为大学生讲授物理的录像。他对主题的绝对掌控力以及讲解中表现出的孩童般的好奇心立刻吸引了我。
I quickly read everything he wrote that I could find. I recognized the joy he derived from uncovering new knowledge and exploring the mysteries of the world—“the pleasure of finding the thing out,” as he put it. “This is the gold. This is the excitement, the pay you get for all of the disciplined thinking and hard work,” he explained in The Meaning of It All.
我迅速阅读了他所写的所有我能找到的东西。我感受到他从发现新知识和探索世界奥秘中获得的乐趣——正如他所说，“发现真相的快乐”。他在《一切意义之所在》中解释道：“这就是黄金。这就是兴奋点，你从所有有条理的思考和辛勤工作中获得的回报。”
不是解决安全感最好的方式，不是办法的办法。
Feynman was a special case, a genius with a singular breadth and depth of understanding of the world and an ability to reason his way through puzzles in an array of fields. But he articulates so well the feeling that took root in me as a kid, when I started building mental models that helped me visualize how the pieces of the world fit together.
费曼是一个特别的存在，他是一个天才，拥有对世界非凡的广度和深度理解，并能通过推理解决多个领域的难题。但他很好地表达了我小时候萌生的那种感觉，那时我开始构建心理模型，帮助我形象化地理解世界的各个部分是如何融合在一起的。
As I accumulated more knowledge, the models grew more sophisticated. That was my path to software. Getting hooked on coding at Lakeside, and through all the steps that followed, I was intensely driven by the love of what I was learning, accruing expertise just when it was needed: at the dawn of the personal computer.
随着我积累了更多的知识，这些模型变得更加复杂。这就是我通往软件领域的道路。在湖滨学校迷上编程，以及之后的每一步，我都被对所学内容的热爱深深驱动，在最需要的时候积累起专业知识：就在个人计算机的黎明时期。
On the spectrum
在光谱上
Curiosity can’t be satisfied in a vacuum. It requires nurturing, resources, guidance, support. The biggest part of my good fortune was being born to Bill and Mary Gates—parents who struggled with their complicated son but ultimately seemed to intuitively understand how to guide him.
好奇心无法在真空中得到满足。它需要培育、资源、指导和支持。而我最大的幸运在于出生在比尔和玛丽·盖茨的家庭——他们为应对自己复杂的儿子而努力，但最终似乎直觉性地理解如何引导他。
If I were growing up today, I probably would be diagnosed on the autism spectrum. During my childhood, the fact that some people’s brains process information differently from others wasn’t widely understood. (The term “neurodivergent” wouldn’t be coined until the 1990s.) My parents had no guideposts or textbooks to help them grasp why their son became so obsessed with certain projects, missed social cues and could be rude and inappropriate without seeming to notice his effect on others.
如果我在今天成长，我可能会被诊断为自闭症谱系。我的童年时代，人们还没有广泛理解，有些人的大脑处理信息的方式与他人不同。（“神经多样性”这个术语直到1990年代才被创造。）我的父母没有任何指引或教材来帮助他们理解，为什么他们的儿子会如此痴迷于某些项目、忽略社交暗示，并且有时表现得粗鲁或不得体，却似乎没有意识到自己对他人的影响。
乔布斯的看法非常准确，参考：《1996-06 Steve Jobs.Triumph of the Nerds》。
Steve Jobs 史蒂夫·乔布斯
The only problem with Microsoft is they just have no taste, they have absolutely no taste, and what that means is - I don't mean that in a small way I mean that in a big way. In the sense that they they don't think of original ideas and they don't bring much culture into their product ehm and you say why is that important - well you know proportionally spaced fonts come from type setting and beautiful books, that's where one gets the idea - if it weren't for the Mac they would never have that in their products and ehm so I guess I am saddened, not by Microsoft's success - I have no problem with their success, they've earned their success for the most part. I have a problem with the fact that they just make really third rate products.
微软唯一的问题是他们没有品味，他们完全没有没有品味，我的意思是——我不是小题大做，我的意思是以一种重要的方式。也就是说，他们不考虑原创的想法，他们不将大量文化融入他们的产品，嗯，你会问这为什么重要——好吧，你知道按比例间隔的字体来自排版和美丽的书籍， 这就是人们产生想法的地方——如果没有 Mac，他们就永远不会出现在他们的产品中，所以我想我感到难过，不是因为微软的成功 - 我对他们的成功没有意见，他们的成功大部分是应得的。我对他们只是制作三流产品这一事实有问题。
What I do know is that my parents afforded me the precise blend of support and pressure I needed: They gave me room to grow emotionally, and they created opportunities for me to develop my social skills. Instead of allowing me to turn inward, they pushed me out into the world—to the baseball team, the Cub Scouts and other families’ dinner tables. And they gave me constant exposure to adults, immersing me in the language and ideas of their friends and colleagues, which fed my curiosity about the world beyond school.
我所知道的是，我的父母给了我所需的恰到好处的支持和压力：他们给了我情感成长的空间，也为我创造了发展社交技能的机会。他们没有让我转向内心世界，而是推动我走向外部世界——加入棒球队、参加幼童军，或去其他家庭的餐桌上吃饭。他们还让我持续接触成年人，让我沉浸在他们朋友和同事的语言和思想中，这激发了我对学校之外世界的好奇心。
包括IBM，也包括巴菲特，堪称子女教育的最高成就，但为什么乔布斯看着更有意思？
Even with their influence, my social side would be slow to develop, as would my awareness of the impact I can have on other people. But that has come with age, with experience, with children, and I’m better for it. I wish it had come sooner, even if I wouldn’t trade the brain I was given for anything.
即使在他们的影响下，我的社交能力发展得仍然很慢，我对自己对他人影响的意识也发展缓慢。但这些都随着年龄、经历和育儿而逐渐提升，我因此变得更好。我希望这些能够来得更早些，但即使如此，我也不会拿我的大脑去交换任何东西。
The “solid front” my parents maintained, laid out by my mom in a letter she wrote my father before they were married, never wavered, but it also allowed for their differences to shape me. I will never have my father’s calm bearing, but he instilled in me a fundamental sense of confidence and capability.
我父母始终保持着一个“坚实的阵线”，这一点在我母亲婚前写给我父亲的一封信中便已显露，从未动摇过，但也正是这种坚固的统一让我从他们的差异中受益。我永远不会拥有我父亲那种冷静的风范，但他让我拥有了一种根本性的自信和能力感。
My mother’s influence was more complex. Internalized by me, her expectations bloomed into an even stronger ambition to succeed, to stand out and to do something important. It was as if I needed to clear my mom’s bar by such a wide margin that there would be nothing left to say on the matter.
我母亲的影响则更为复杂。她的期望被我内化，转化为更强烈的成功欲望，想要脱颖而出，做出重要的成就。仿佛我必须以足够大的差距超越她的期望，这样就没有任何质疑的余地了。
But, of course, there was always something more to be said. It was my mother who regularly reminded me that I was merely a steward of any wealth I gained. With wealth came the responsibility to give it away, she would tell me.
当然，总还有需要去做的事情。我母亲经常提醒我，我只是自己所获得财富的管理者。她会告诉我，财富伴随着责任，要将它捐赠出去。
I regret that my mom didn’t live long enough to see how fully I’ve tried to meet that expectation: she passed away in 1994, at age 64, from breast cancer. It would be my father in the years after my mom died who would help get our foundation started and serve as a co-chair for years, bringing the same compassion and decency that had served so well in his law career.
我遗憾的是，母亲没有活到看到我如何努力去实现她的期望：她于1994年因乳腺癌去世，享年64岁。在母亲去世后的这些年里，是我的父亲帮助建立了我们的基金会，并担任多年联合主席，将他在律师生涯中表现出的同样的仁爱与品格融入其中。
For most of my life, I’ve been focused on what’s ahead. Even now, most days I’m working on hoped-for breakthroughs that may not happen for years, if they happen at all.
我一生中大部分时间都专注于未来。即使是现在，大多数日子里我都在努力实现那些可能需要多年才能实现的突破，甚至可能永远无法实现。
As I grow older, though, I find myself looking back more and more. Piecing together memories helps me better understand myself, it turns out. It’s a marvel of adulthood to realize that when you strip away all the years and all the learning, much of who you are was there from the start. I still feel the same sense of anticipation—a kid alert and wanting to make sense of it all.
然而，随着年龄的增长，我发现自己越来越频繁地回顾过去。拼凑记忆让我更好地理解自己。成人生活的奇妙之处在于，当你剥离所有的岁月和学习后，你会发现，你的许多特质从一开始就已经存在。我依然感到那种熟悉的期待感——像一个渴望弄清一切的小孩，充满警觉。
Bill Gates is the chair of the Gates Foundation and the co-founder of Microsoft. This essay is adapted from his new memoir, “Source Code: My Beginnings,” which will be published by Knopf on Feb. 4.
比尔·盖茨是盖茨基金会的主席和微软的联合创始人。这篇文章改编自他的回忆录《源代码：我的开端》，该书将由Knopf出版社于2月4日出版。
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