At 16:44 15.02.99 -0800, Bill Felton wrote:
[Bill Gates] 
>is alleged to later have gone to commenting "I could do it in
>days in Smalltalk"...

I recall this anecdote a tad different, so I went rummaging in DejaNews.
Coming up with "gates and weekend and visual", I found where I heard it first:

Dan Goldman wrote on 27jan1997 in comp.lang.smalltalk:
>
>Tell you a cute story about that.  This came from one of Gates' senior
>staffers during negotiations with MS several years ago.  Jim Anderson
>(then president of Digitalk) had given Bill a demo of Smalltalk/V
>Windows and had left him a copy, which he apparently spent some
>considerable time with.
>One of Bill's favorite sayings during the weekly product status meetings
>was "I could do that in a weekend in (Visual) Basic."  He was in the
>Excel staff meeting one Monday morning just after the meeting with Jim,
>sparring with Rich Tong about a new feature set for Excel, and out of
>nowhere he said, "I could do that over the weekend in Smalltalk." 
>Silence suddenly descended on the room as the shocked product staff
>absorbed this.  Bill, suddenly realizing what he had said, giggled and
>said, "Of course, I meant Basic."

SCNR,
Helge