Bill Gates had the strategic vision to see that software was not only going to be a viable industry, it was likely to be the most valuable computer industry. I

Bill Gates had the strategic vision to see that software was not only going to be a viable industry, it was likely to be the most valuable computer industry. It seems like he was good but not a spectacular programmer himself. Barbarians Led By Bill Gates is a great book about the relatively early days of Microsoft--early enough that the book describes some instances of programmers finding and replacing Bill's code with better stuff. IIRC there is at least one story of a new guy going "who wrote this crappy code" and then finding out it was Gates.