51–60 of 182 posts
I don't think many people realize that Woz's dad was an electrical engineer at Lockheed who would bring home computer manuals that Woz would read as a kid. This seems to be a fairly effective way to create world-changing computer engineers.
Regression tends to the mean. Imagine what Apple might have been if Woz's dad had been in the factory!
Woz was scary good at both hw and sw (author of Apple BASIC.) If you have time, go through his various Apple documents online. I believe he was never the same after his small plane crashed. (Back then, wealthy people used small planes like ATVs, and had about the same safety record.) I worked with another hw engineer of similar ability back in the 80s. Mind-blowing watching him just pick up a pen and draw out a compl…
I wonder why rich people have such a high urge to fly small airplanes. It seems to expose you to a lot of risk, which you could easily avoid (I’ve lived a considerable number of years without facing a single situation where I was likely to fly an airplane).
Woz was scary good at both hw and sw (author of Apple BASIC.) If you have time, go through his various Apple documents online. I believe he was never the same after his small plane crashed. (Back then, wealthy people used small planes like ATVs, and had about the same safety record.) I worked with another hw engineer of similar ability back in the 80s. Mind-blowing watching him just pick up a pen and draw out a compl…
I wonder why rich people have such a high urge to fly small airplanes. It seems to expose you to a lot of risk, which you could easily avoid (I’ve lived a considerable number of years without facing a single situation where I was likely to fly an airplane).
As a senior Java / CPP developer, reading what Wozniak had written, it might have been some incantation in a forgotten language. I really wish I had done more embedded and assembly at school. I can't understand it or appreciate it. Maybe SW and HW shouldn't mix, bar a few visionaries who bridge both worlds?
> As a senior Java / CPP developer This makes me cringe. A "senior" engineer is defined by whatever role a company slots you in. This is compounded by adding programming languages to the mix. > I really wish I had done more embedded and assembly at school. I can't understand it or appreciate it. There is no hardware involved here, per-se. What is there is the 6502 instruction set, plus binary floating point calculati…
Here's one example:
https://jameshfisher.com/2018/03/10/linux-assembly-hello-wor...
Having written a lot of 8 bit assembler for the 6800 microprocessor for 2K eproms, I can attest it is a very different skill from writing modern software.
Would love to hear more about this - have you written on your experiences?
[1] https://www.linusakesson.net/programming/poems-for-bugs/inde...
[2] e.g. https://www.linusakesson.net/scene/a-mind-is-born/index.php
edit:
I love the Zachtronics games "Shenzhen I/O" (easier) and "TIS-100" (MUCH harder/esoteric). They are a great (and fun) way to try asm/microcontroller programming.
I don't think many people realize that Woz's dad was an electrical engineer at Lockheed who would bring home computer manuals that Woz would read as a kid. This seems to be a fairly effective way to create world-changing computer engineers.
Regression tends to the mean. Imagine what Apple might have been if Woz's dad had been in the factory!
Code is available upon request.
I learned to program on a 6502 when I was younger - it's a little depressing that computers went and got so fast that there's no real justification for doing this sort of thing any more in almost any domain (except, I guess, if you manage to land a position developing embedded I2C drivers).
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Regression tends to the mean. Imagine what Apple might have been if Woz's dad had been in the factory!
'Tends', not 'is guaranteed to go'. Sometimes kids are much smarter than their parents.