111–120 of 166 posts
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modern engineering is launching an electron to-do list app that uses 2gb of ram.
Which, at least works relibly across all platforms and devices unlike desktop frameworks? People wouldnt use electron is they had good alternative
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Without the gnu projects, software would have remained in the domain of universities and industry. Distributing it for free and encapsulating it with an actual legal license was radical in and of itself, but the notion of being required to distribute source was even more radical. Without that, people don't learn to code outside of industry, people don't share ideas and software remains in corporate silos with no/low…
> outside of industry, people don't share ideas and software remains in corporate silos with no/low interoptability unless a business decides to form a strategic partnership. Computer science and computing was taught and done at universities long before Stallman and GNU came along. I was using C++ Release E at college before GNU started, provided by Bell Labs at no cost.
>> remained in the domain of universities and industry
> I was using C++ Release E at college before GNU started, provided by Bell Labs at no cost.
Was the source available, and possible to modify it?
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When you look at it squarely, Jobs could have sold any average product and made money, and Woz' product was so far above average it could have sold on its own (to a more limited extent), with each unit sold making money either way. Money would be made by each person regardless but this combination not only got more units to fly off the shelf, it got the company off to a more above-average likelihood of future product…
Woz took the Apple 1 to HP to see if they wanted it, since he was working there at the time. They passed on it. It seems Woz would have just kept working as an HP engineer and bringing designs to the homebrew computer club to give them away as a hobby. Jobs went on to start NeXT (which became modern Apple) and turned Pixar into a the studio that released Toy Story. Jobs wasn’t just a salesman, he was a serial entrepr…
And so was Woz.
What actually hapened couldn't have happened any other way.
>It seems Woz would have just kept working as an HP engineer and bringing designs to the homebrew computer club to give them away as a hobby.
If so it could only continue for so long before a lesser entrepreneur took the position that Jobs undertook.
And Apple might only be about half the size it is now.
Is that so bad?
It’s a stark contrast to today's mindset where we often just throw more resources at the problem. His obsession with elegance over features is something I try to keep in mind, even if it's harder in modern web dev. " Let's make it shorter and punchier. "Woz's floppy disk controller design is still the gold standard for doing in software what competitors needed a whole board of chips to do. That kind of obsession with…
modern engineering is launching an electron to-do list app that uses 2gb of ram.
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They were both brilliant, but from everything that I've read, Jobs was an ass****, and Woz was the opposite, and that is a huge, huge difference. The mythologizing of Jobs is the canonical example of people condoning terrible behavior because they think that a person is smart/valuable/talented/etc. To me this is completely backwards and sets a terrible precedent - that you can act however you want if you get results…
I'm not sure what to believe. I know he was incredibly demanding, and I've heard the stories, but he also inspired a lot of loyalty and commitment from plenty of very talented engineers who were not short of other options.
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To be fair, Woz wasn't just a “friendly selfless genius inventor engineer” , he was also the co-founder of one of the most valuable tech companies in the world. And YC is, in their own words: "The Y combinator is one of the coolest ideas in computer science. It's also a metaphor for what we do. It's a program that runs programs; we're a company that helps start companies." . They're not entirely unrelated.
He was a cofounder because of his skill and Jobs talking him into it. Woz would have been perfectly happy as an engineer at HP, that was his plan.
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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”.
Woz is by far the person in computing history for whom I have the most respect. Dude is an absolute legend , and from everything I have heard is humble and kind on top of his crazy skills. If I could get to the point where I had even 10% of his skill and generosity of spirit, I would consider myself to have done pretty well.
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.
I can certainly see why he would be the "model employee" of the new tech elite/political class, though, and what they desperately want all of us to be! Sit down, shut up, and get back to work!
Woz is by far the person in computing history for whom I have the most respect. Dude is an absolute legend , and from everything I have heard is humble and kind on top of his crazy skills. If I could get to the point where I had even 10% of his skill and generosity of spirit, I would consider myself to have done pretty well.
Everyone chooses the wrong Steve to worship.