The first in a planned trilogy of books about his life, Source Code covers Gates' remarkable childhood in Seattle, his brief stint at Harvard, and the early years of “Micro-soft” in Albuquerque. This is not the behind-the-scenes story of today’s trillion-dollar tech giant.

In his new autobiography, the computer pioneer and philanthropist writes of his origins, and about how, in eighth grade, he discovered BASIC, which introduced him to the elegance and exacting demands of computer code.

Source Code,” the first of three planned memoirs by Bill Gates, might end up being the most personal of them: With the next books dedicated to chronicling his career in tech and philanthropy, this one has room to meander through the tech co-founder’s mostly charmed youth in 1960s Seattle.