I refused to meet bill gates, besides I always felt that Steve Ballmar was the " real man behind the curtain" lol. Personally I would suggest, reading the 3 tomes by Donald Knuth (The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 2 can generally be skipped, but Volumes 1 and 3, cannot, and there are more volumes now). These will give one of the finest groundings in computer programming, independent of a programming language (Knuth uses a hypothetical assembly language to illustrate everything). Being independent of a programming language, is a great objective as well.
Consider that as soon as one, understands the concept of a fork, and how to use it to eat. That one is enabled to use any fork, to eat with. So why do people become so enamored with a language I do not understand. The only languages I became enamored with were, IBM System 370/390 Assembly, and Intel 80xx Assembly language. I’ve forgotten more languages than most others will ever learn, because they come and go like the seasons of the year, but Assembly, for the major processors of our lives, do not change.
So get at least two of the books (Ebook it is much cheaper), and just dive right into UE4 itself. The source code is there, made available by Epic (And huge kudos to Epic for this), so I would suggest starting where you wish to be anyway! Remember, because you have the source code for the engine, you can change it to do anything you wish…
I have no degree, I just started with Knuth, and IBM System 370 Principles of Operation (yes it’s still available as well, and the FINEST description of a computer architecture you will ever read). Just like with any sport, become well grounded in the fundamentals, and everything else will fall in place. Then one day, you may look at the latest and greatest whizbang language to hit the market, and think to yourself, “This is an abomination!!!” (Just like I did with C++, and others)
Hope this helps