Software Architecture and Bill Gates

As I pointed out in yesterday's post, I'm very curious about Bill's role contribution to the software development process at Microsoft.  While reading some blogs last night, I ran across Rob Howard's recap of an ASP.NET design review meeting with Bill. 

Its fascinating to me that Bill and other Microsoft executives maintain such a firm grasp on the fundamental technologies in their products.  I would guess that its not just a tribute to their intelligence and capabilities, but also to their understanding of what's important to their business.  In many companies, upper-level management loses focus on their core products and services and become caught up in bureaucracy, procedural and administrative matters, and other issues that do not have a direct correlation to business results.

Having said all that, I'm still curious to learn more about Bill's participation in Microsoft's development process.  Any anecdotes or relevant links would be appreciated.

[Posted by Randy Holloway ]

Well Randy I think Bill Gates is not an ordinary executive,he's for me still a geek.
If you just look everything written on his house, you can understand that easily.
I think also that whatever the role you give him, he's still the most important Microsoft shareholder.
Of course, I don't think now he's doing any coding as he admit it in a recent interview, but without trying to compare to him, I also started in the same timeline, and I always keep the passion to be informed on everything techie.