Indian programmers the best, says Bill Gates
Bill Gates, while addressing a conference in Bangalore, has said that Indian programmers are the best.
“The best programmers for Microsoft come from India,” he told an audience of 4,000 programmers during a four day tour of India.
He received a standing ovation in response, and went on to talk about how Indians could shape emerging software trends using Microsoft tools. His audience consisted mostly of people from outsourcing companies.
He said Microsoft wants to expand its Indian workforce by an additional 3000 people, up from 4000 today. He intends to spend US$1.7 billion on the expansion.
“We have done an incredible job of taking the features of new technology to 1 billion people,” he said. “But now we have to work on taking them to the 5 billion out there who need to be included…That’s the reason I want to reach out to Indian software developers who can bring down the cost of these products, not only for the growing market here, but for the global market as well.”
He spoke about the future of computing, and how he expected it to move from PCs to gadgets.
“And here (in India), I see the most lively group of programmers who understand the computing revolution,” he said.