This article is, first, a false dilemma, saying that it’s “not true” that rewards come as a result of merit and not luck. Both are important. Second, the article mentions Bill Gates, explaining that lots of programmers were or are as good as Bill Gates was, but only he got rich. They neglect to mention that Gates has the business ethics of a hyena, e.g. racing a GUI to market after being shown one at Apple, before even Apple did. (Yes, perhaps it was foolish of Steve Jobs to have shown it to Gates, but, still it represents outright theft of IP on the latter’s part.) Given how crappy and insecure Microsoft software is, it is difficult to argue they have any programming expertise whatsoever. Instead, all Microsoft has to offer is new and expanded ways of capturing market share and then expanding the imposition of rentier fees on those captured.
“...GUI to market after being shown one at Apple,...foolish of Steve Jobs to have shown it to Gates ...Gates has the business ethics of a hyena ...”
Actually so did Jobs, he stole the GUI from PARC XEROX !
What the Airforce calls fly and fix, get a plane out and them make it work, Gates helped to introduce to programming as well, spending money others had been on better code on more advertising.