teamgates.com/library/life.htm). The students wrote programs, read computer books, and did anything to learn how the computer and software worked. The students eventually had to rely on money raised by their mothers to buy more computer time (Reitz 5).
Out of the members of the Lakeside Programmers Group Bill Gates and Paul Allen quickly surpassed the others. They would spend so much time on the computer they wouldn't turn in other school work and would skip class (Mirick 23). The principle was so impressed with their knowledge that he had Bill and Paul write a program to make schedules for Lakeside. Coincidently when the schedules were finished Bill and Paul were in all of their classes with the hottest girls (http://www.teamgates.com/library /life.htm).
Lakeside eventually moved their computer time to a company called Computer Center Corporation, or C-Cubed. Bill Gates and Paul Allen got in trouble at C-Cubed when they hacked into the system and altered their computer time (Reitz 3). Seeing their skills with computers, C-Cubed offered the two unlimited computer time if they found and reported any computer bugs they found. Gates learned BASIC, FORTRAN, LISP, and PDP-10 machine languages while working on the computer and reading manuals (Reitz 4).
When C-Cubed went bankrupt the Lakeside Programmers Group had to find a new place to use computer time. The students found this place in Portland, where in exchange for computer time, they wrote a payroll program. Bill learned about payroll, taxes, and labor reports, which would help him later in life when he was CEO of Microsoft (Reitz 5). At this time in his life Bill's parents became worried that he was spending too much time with computers. They restricted him from using computers for about a year. During this time Bill read many books on history, science, and novels. His favorite book was Catcher in the Rye (Dearlove 4).
Bill had many jobs during his teenage years.
