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There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him

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Re: There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him

#61

Post by paulcole »

postalcoder wrote: post #58
paulcole wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you believe all marketing and advertising copy that you read?

Look at the questions I'm replying to. They, in one way or another, asked me to draw a line between Woz and Ycombinator. That's what I did. Woz has always carried a near perfect approval rate in our community. I've never seen anyone come close.

Sorry, I was replying to the person who said, “Since when was HN about venture capital?” The answer to that is obviously since its inception. It’s like watching those weird flying contraption contests and asking, “Since when is Red Bull about energy drinks?”

Re: There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him

#62

Post by [deleted] »

paulcole wrote: post #61
postalcoder wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the questions I'm replying to. They, in one way or another, asked me to draw a line between Woz and Ycombinator. That's what I did. Woz has always carried a near perfect approval rate in our community. I've never seen anyone come close.

Sorry, I was replying to the person who said, “Since when was HN about venture capital?” The answer to that is obviously since its inception. It’s like watching those weird flying contraption contests and asking, “Since when is Red Bull about energy drinks?”

[deleted]

Re: There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him

#63

Post by postalcoder »

paulcole wrote: post #61
postalcoder wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Look at the questions I'm replying to. They, in one way or another, asked me to draw a line between Woz and Ycombinator. That's what I did. Woz has always carried a near perfect approval rate in our community. I've never seen anyone come close.

Sorry, I was replying to the person who said, “Since when was HN about venture capital?” The answer to that is obviously since its inception. It’s like watching those weird flying contraption contests and asking, “Since when is Red Bull about energy drinks?”

Oh wait that was me. I mean, yes you're right that vc and startups are inextricable. But I’d argue their underlying spirit isn’t the same.

I realize that’s a normative claim. Like the blind men and the elephant, we’re each touching a different part.

Re: There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him

#64

Post by paulcole »

postalcoder wrote: post #63
paulcole wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, I was replying to the person who said, “Since when was HN about venture capital?” The answer to that is obviously since its inception. It’s like watching those weird flying contraption contests and asking, “Since when is Red Bull about energy drinks?”

Oh wait that was me. I mean, yes you're right that vc and startups are inextricable. But I’d argue their underlying spirit isn’t the same. I realize that’s a normative claim. Like the blind men and the elephant, we’re each touching a different part.

> But I’d argue their underlying spirit isn’t the same.

And your argument is based on the fact that you’d like this to be true as well as the fact that the vc company behind this site said, “Trust us bro!”

How is that different from the cow saying, “The farmer told us we’re walking through a fun maze!”

Re: There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him

#66

Post by postalcoder »

paulcole wrote: post #64
postalcoder wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Oh wait that was me. I mean, yes you're right that vc and startups are inextricable. But I’d argue their underlying spirit isn’t the same. I realize that’s a normative claim. Like the blind men and the elephant, we’re each touching a different part.

> But I’d argue their underlying spirit isn’t the same. And your argument is based on the fact that you’d like this to be true as well as the fact that the vc company behind this site said, “Trust us bro!” How is that different from the cow saying, “The farmer told us we’re walking through a fun maze!”

I may have overthought this and wandered into territory I don’t actually have strong convictions about. My original impulse was simply to show some love for Woz.

Re: There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him

#67

Post by bazoom42 »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #51

> his post-Apple life has mattered in ways that have nothing to do with money or power. Sounds a bit like Jimmy Carter. His best and most influential work came after he left The Oval Office.

Maybe best, but suerly not most influential.

Re: There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him

#68

Post by chairmansteve »

omnimus wrote: post #25
postalcoder wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I can't think of a single person who embodies the spirit of this site more than Woz. dang could replace the guidelines with a picture of Woz and we'd all know what it meant.

Let's not forget url of this site is Ycombinator. As far as i know that is very far from “friendly selfless genius inventor engineer”. It's more like “ambitious finance move fast and break things programmer”.

You are right. But the real world is a messy place. Good people do bad things and vice versa. Not many people are entirely good or entirely bad.

HN is a very strong net positive IMO. YC could easily monetize it into oblivion. They don't.

Re: There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him

#69

Post by pixl97 »

quietbritishjim wrote: post #31
high_na_euv wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which, at least works relibly across all platforms and devices unlike desktop frameworks? People wouldnt use electron is they had good alternative

Flutter / Dart? It's compiled ahead of time and doesn't use an embedded browser so I'd expect it to be a lot lighter, though I haven't measured. But the general lack of really cross-platform (desktop + mobile + maybe web) ecosystems is just as much as sign that devs consider multi-gigabyte Electron apps "good enough" as the apps themselves.

>at devs consider multi-gigabyte Electron apps "good enough" as the apps themselves.

This kind of misses out on a hierarchy of devs here and the amount of work to make it happen. Electron took a large chunk from a multi-billion dollar endeavor to use to make all this work. Electron only worked because Chrome was there. Chrome worked because Google already had unlimited money from advertising, and getting advertising on every device possible was their goal.

Devs might want light apps everywhere, but seemingly none are going to dedicate the rest of their life and money to make it work.

Re: There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him

#70

Post by pixl97 »

aix1 wrote: post #22
nekooooo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

modern engineering is launching an electron to-do list app that uses 2gb of ram.

What I'm seeing more and more of is junior folks blindly taking LLM-generated code and including it into their systems, without even trying to understand it or think critically about what it does and where it might break. Maybe I am living in the past, but it does make me think that they might be depriving themselves of an opportunity to develop key skills.

>without even trying to understand it or think critically about what it does and where it might break.

You are living in a past, but one much farther back than you expect.

People were copying code from SO since it became popular.

People are including node modules blindly before AI.

Most developers suck, terribly. Maybe being on HN is a type of filter that shows you're just a little bit better than the average, but the number of developers on HN is small versus the total number of developers.

Edit: I was copying code out of magazines to get games running without understanding anything about it when I was young.

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