
Does Steve Jobs know how to code? - bane
http://www.woz.org/letters/does-steve-jobs-know-how-code
======
npalli
It looks like the response was written when Jobs was still around. I doubt Woz
would sound so belligerent now. In any case, if you watch some of Job’s old
videos and biographical material, it was clear he knew coding. There was some
mainframe terminal in his high school that he first learnt how to code.

Now Woz was clearly Genius level when it came to tight hardware/software
engineering. So, it is not at all surprising Jobs had limited input when it
came to the Apple I and II design. In fact Jobs mentions that Woz was the
first guy who knew more about electronics than he (Jobs) did. In Woz’s
response, quoted here, he mentions that Jobs was technical enough to
alter/change/add to the design. Does that sound like someone who doesn’t know
anything?

I find it sad that engineers project their own insecurities in this whole
Jobs/Woz saga. Jobs was highly involved in not just the technical aspects but
the overall vision of Apple I, II, Macintosh, iPod, iPhone, iPad. He was one
of a kind. There is no need to pull him down and artificially elevate Woz to
something he was not. Jobs could work with the best
engineers/marketeers/design/retail people during Apple II and the iPad. A
whole 35 year period in technology. How would you think Woz would have fared
in deep technical discussions involving the iPhone? How many engineers do you
know who have worked at the highest level for 35 years? Technology was only
one of the aspects that Jobs understood quite well.

~~~
badman_ting
I agree. I think there is a real resentment among people who work hard to
master technical details, only to have guys in positions like Jobs's more or
less float over that. It's like, you didn't put in the hard work to learn
endianness like I did, so you don't know shit.

The kind of knowledge and savoir-faire that Jobs had is not concrete,
ineffable. Engineers tend to hate that, they think it's just a bunch of shit.

~~~
RogerL
Jobs was extremely smart to brilliant. What he didn't do, and what he said he
did, was design the Apple I. There was a front page article a few weks ago
linking to a bunch of Jobs videos, and again and again he'd stand in a front
of a bunch of people and claim to have designed the Apple I.

I guess none of us really know the score in that regard, but certainly
everything in the rest of their careers backs up Steve's story.

Engineers hate lying, not soft skills.

~~~
300bps
_Engineers hate lying, not soft skills._

Thank you for pointing out this very important distinction. I think it's
important to realize that Jobs was human and not the most humane among us.
It's easy to realize if you read this:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Brennan-
Jobs](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisa_Brennan-Jobs)

 _Development of the Apple Lisa computer began in the year of Brennan 's
birth, just as Apple Computer, the company her father founded, began to
experience significant growth. Jobs initially denied paternity, and he and
Apple claimed that the name was an acronym for "Local Integrated Software
Architecture".[5] Steve Jobs swore in court documents that he could not be
Lisa's father because he was "sterile and infertile, and as a result thereof,
did not have the physical capacity to procreate a child."[2] Decades later,
Jobs admitted to his biographer Walter Isaacson, "Obviously, it was named for
my daughter."[_

The guy swore under oath and penalty of perjury that he was incapable of
fathering the daughter he in fact fathered and concocted an elaborate story to
explain away why he named one of Apple's computers after this girl that he
claimed was not his daughter.

So I agree with you; engineers tend to deal in reality. Many people are
successful because they successfully sell non-reality to people when it suits
their purpose. Engineers tend to have problems with such people.

~~~
garyrob
I just want to say kudos to the above responses. I think they're right on the
money. In fact, I think the main reason I got into engineering in the first
place is that I couldn't stand people's bullshit. In engineering, it actually
matters whether what you say is true or not, because if it isn't, the thing
won't work.

~~~
na85
Get over yourself.

There are plenty of fields where "it won't work" if you lie. Law? Surgery?

Let's leave aside for a second the enormous number of programmers who aren't
actually engineers (with an engineering degree) who still use the Engineer
title.

~~~
vwinsyee
Sorry, I had to chuckle when I saw you include law as one of the fields where
lying "won't work." For many parties, lying in court does "work" for them if
they can get away with it. Recent case in point: the DEA using NSA intercepts
to launch investigations, then lie in court about how these investigations
originally started. [1]

[1] [http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-
idUSBRE...](http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/08/05/us-dea-sod-
idUSBRE97409R20130805)

~~~
na85
Litigation/trial law is but a small part of the Law profession.

Perjury is also a felony, despite the fact that your country's justice system
doesn't seem to enforce it.

------
soneca
Kind of OT, but a little sad thing I noticed in the "Jobs" movie trailer (at
least the version they are showing in Brazil) is that while the images are
clearly showing Woz showing what he did (Apple I) and then he and Jobs working
together all the time, the text was saying "It only takes one person... ...to
start a revolution".

WTF?! One person? I am not even making any moral judgement here, I am just
shocked of how schizophrenic it is. People don't even bother about coherence
any more? And them the movie goes on to show another people joining, two more
engineers, a investor. It was just weird...

~~~
wslh
I know it sounds bad, but some "penalty" (adding a rating system for lies?)
should exist for plain lies and fake revisionism in films. The extreme of this
in another context are the laws against Holocaust denial:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laws_against_Holocaust_denial)
we can't obviously compare the Steve Jobs film with it, but the cinema has a
long tradition of modifying historical facts without the typical disclaimer.

~~~
throwit1979
Offtopic. That link is incredibly scary. On what basis does Europe justify
making an incorrect opinion illegal? And why that opinion, specifically? Why
not criminalize a belief in God, or alien visitation?

~~~
icecreampain
The funny part is that its a specific opinion, also.

Questioning the existence of the Holodomor, for example, even though it
conservatively resulted in the deaths of 7 million people in one single year,
more than the whole "6 million jews in 6 years" thing, is not illegal.

In fact most people in Europe are blissfully unaware of the Holodomor at all.
Or of Stalin's and Mao's murdered millions.

Strange, yes?

~~~
JVIDEL
Not strange at all, the problem is that you had an entire generation ripping
through Paris' streets throwing bricks at the police while holding mao's book
in their hands when in china people were dying by the millions due to the
pogroms better known as the "cultural revolution", one of the biggest success
stories in marketing considering mao was able to repackage state-sanctioned
genocide with a cool name less than 10 years after the abysmal failure of the
"great leap forward" which also claimed the lives of million of chinese.

For those people acknowledging the holodomor and giving it the same status of
the holocaust or even that of the armenian genocide means admitting they spent
most of their youth defending mass murderers.

~~~
moocowduckquack
Umm, the holomodor was under Stalin in the early thirties, everyone alive then
is dead now. edit - well, everyone who was old enough to be involved in the
politics, anyway.

Also, it is illegal in France to deny the communist mass atrocities, just as
it is illegal to deny the nazi ones.

What are you talking about?

~~~
JVIDEL
Ask trotsky how easy it was to be a communist in the thirties and _not_ defend
stalin.

And got a link to that? because all I could find was a petition from eastern
european countries to the UE asking for penalties on deniers of the crimes of
communism.

~~~
moocowduckquack
Actually, I am wrong about France.

It has a law from 1990 which criminalises denying those crimes against
humanity covered by the Nuremberg Charter, however that only dealt with trying
the Axis powers, so doesn't cover the USSR.

There is then the law that got brought in in 2012 that makes it a crime to
deny any genocide recognised as such as by the state. However that law got
struck down by a court, and also they might count what happened in the USSR as
a mass atrocity rather than a genocide, so it might not have covered it.

------
danso
Issacson's biography doesn't indicate that Jobs ever wrote code, but at the
very least we can say that he was one of the few non-coders who didn't treat
it as a fungible commodity given that he literally threw a crying tantrum to
get Woz to co-found Apple.

Also this: [http://www.npr.org/2011/10/06/141115121/steve-jobs-
computer-...](http://www.npr.org/2011/10/06/141115121/steve-jobs-computer-
science-is-a-liberal-art)

> _" In my perspective ... science and computer science is a liberal art, it's
> something everyone should know how to use, at least, and harness in their
> life. It's not something that should be relegated to 5 percent of the
> population over in the corner. It's something that everybody should be
> exposed to and everyone should have mastery of to some extent, and that's
> how we viewed computation and these computation devices."_

------
wsc981
I wonder if Woz's response is only in context of Apple. IIRC Steve Jobs did
actually code when he worked at Atari.

 _Edit:_ Steve Jobs believed that everyone should learn how to program, I
don't think that statement would make any sense if he didn't know how to
program himself (even if it's just the basics):
[http://vimeo.com/64572687](http://vimeo.com/64572687)

~~~
raverbashing
"Coding" in that context is not as relevant

The low-level programming needed for the Apple I is very different from
"general programming". It made sense for Woz to do the hardware and the
software.

In fact I doubt most "coders" of today could do something simple for an Apple
I, even given modern resources (like a ASM compiler).

~~~
enry_straker
Woz was one of a kind.

A Mad genius, to paraphrase Ang ( from Avatar the last Airbender )

There is no parallel to him and i don't believe there is anyone who can do
both original hardware design and low and high level coding like woz.

~~~
mathattack
Wasn't it a slightly less specialized world back then too? The software and
hardware were tightly enough linked that you needed someone who could do both.
I think Woz is a case of a mad genius being born in the time that suited him.

Nowadays a generalist is someone who can do both the front and back end of a
website, let alone assembler or hardware. (That's why I find Jeff Atwood's
keyboard work interesting, independent of the caliber
[http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/08/the-code-
keyboard.h...](http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2013/08/the-code-
keyboard.html))

~~~
xradionut
"Wasn't it a slightly less specialized world back then too?"

Yes. Byte had Steve Ciarcia's articles, which were one of the main features of
the magazine. We used to modify and build hardware, not just to overclock it,
but piggyback memory chips or talk to bench equipment in the lab.

By the time I got out of high school, military and university I had: Built a
pirated Apple II+, etched circuit boards, worked with 20 different operating
systems, built radios, modems, remotes, door openers, set up a BBS, repaired
TVs and stereos for beer money, modified a radar system and so on...

------
Sagat
How much technical experience did Jobs actually have? Did he actually have a
part in designing all the successful products or was he just a manager and
marketer?

I don't mean to diss Jobs or imply that he wasn't important, but I don't
clearly understand what his role was in Apple's success.

~~~
threeseed
Honestly it's just ignorance on your part.

If you watch some of the presentations Jobs gave e.g. during his NeXt days
it's pretty clear that he absolutely understands every bit of the technology
as good as any engineering manager. The ability to combine technical knowledge
with exceptional design, marketing and product development skills is what made
him vital to Apple's success.

~~~
bdcravens
Important distinction: understanding the technology != coding. I think alot of
folks who worship Jobs here believe saying he couldn't code is some sort of
ultimate insult. It's not; he understood his products. I've met many
programmers who have no clue about the product they're building, and some who
barely grok the tech outside of their area of responsibility.

------
jamesjguthrie
In the 'Lost Interview' of 1995, Steve Jobs says that he was programming at
the HP Palo Alto lab, on the 9100 in BASIC and ATL.

He would "hang around that machine and write programs for it"

[http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=m8m...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_detailpage&v=m8mttU82V64#t=299)

------
MarlonPro
Woz's response exactly conforms to Jobs' account on the topic in his
biography, "Steve Jobs" by Walter Isaacson. Woz's response is not all
belligerent, as somebody here implied.

------
ruexperienced
I don't have time to read all the comments. But from the first several ones I
read it seems that folks, for a change, missed Woz's response. Woz didn't say
that Steve couldn't or didn't know how to code, but that "Steve didn't ever
code." Very different answers!

I mean, even a monkey can be tough how to code at least at some level. Now,
the level at which Woz was coding was not your standard Ruby scripting mombo
jumbo, and hence it's a world apart from what some folks consider coding,
which is implicit in what he's saying.

Also by Woz saying that "(Steve) wasn't an engineer," he was clearly stating
the fact that Steve at that point in time was more about the business, the
direction of things and the big picture rather than the nitty gritty stuff for
which he had Woz to do it for him/them.

All in all, lets be honest, Steve forte was never ever his technical prowess.
I'm sure some business majors here, who get away with getting other folks do
to stuff for them, truly believe they are very technical as well, even though
they don't know shit!

Steve definitely had a good eye at what could and couldn't sell, particularly
at the end of his career. Now, what Steve was really good about was in getting
very good technical folks in house and getting away in pushing them to the
limit of exploitation, because after all it was Steve Jobs. Hence, he was
great at causing confusion and manipulation, which is why he was so good at
marketing.

If Woz wouldn't have been around, Apple simply wouldn't have existed with
Steve alone. Now, Steve was definitely a hustler and probably would have
started another type of business, but we simply wouldn't know about it.

------
hbharadwaj
It is quite an irony. If an engineer were to come across a "Jobs" like
character, he/she would ignore him/her for the most part. This makes it harder
for a "Jobs" like character to make a breakthrough to big stages. To me, he
was a brilliant Product Manager. I have seen really good Product Managers who
could not write a "select *" query. They have a sense of technology like no
others in the sense that they can apply technological solutions to real life
problems and envision product futures. They don't care as much about the
intrinsic details.

Every time I see a post on HN stating "Here are the things I look for in a
Product Manager", I begin envisioning Jobs trying to take on such tests and it
is quite funny.

------
denzil_correa
Q: Does Steve Jobs know how to code? A: Steve Jobs never wrote code

Woz doesn't say Jobs didn't know to code. He merely says that he didn't code
at Apple.

------
bdcravens
I listen to a lot of entrepreneurial podcasts, mostly focused on
bootstrapping, with an emphasis on SaaS products. On these shows, the
entrepreneur is king. They often emphasize outsourcing to VAs, which makes
sense. However, I see some of them with an attitude that technical skills are
of this same value: something you just buy when you need it, as cheap as
possible. Yesterday I think it was the Smart Passive Income podcast I was
listening to where they (Pat had a guest) encouraged going to vWorker (yes, I
know it's been acquired) if you need a developer to implement something.

Part of me was angry; the other part of me realized the truth of what they
were saying. On one hand, some companies require their technology to be a
competitive advantage. At a company like Apple, this isn't the case. The tech
in their products is actually pretty good, but that's not what sells the
products. Yes, they'll mention processor speeds etc at WWDC to thunderous
applause, but then you'll never hear those things mentioned in the marketing.
Apple has always been about vision, beauty, and simplicity. During Jobs's
hiatus, they went down the multiple configurations and flexibility route; Jobs
revamped their line and simplified it when he returned. The tech facilitates,
doesn't lead.

------
joeblau
Did he write code in NeXTSTEP? I guess that wouldn't be a question for Woz.

~~~
JPKab
Not trying to minimize anything he did with NeXT, but I would be shocked if he
did the coding for it..... he was already wealthy, and was an executive trying
to launch a premium product.

I'm sure he had a vision for it, but it wouldn't make sense for him to have
been bogged down at that level.

~~~
chiph
There was a demo he did of NeXTSTEP where he coded some stuff (can't provide a
link - work blocks streaming video). It's certainly possible that he memorized
it, but he didn't have any hesitations so I think he had more than a casual
familiarity with it.

------
kyllo
There are degrees of knowing how to code. Did Jobs know enough to write a
simple program? Probably. Was it ever his job to write programs? Did he ever
contribute code at Apple? Probably not.

------
shocknawesome
Oh look another engineer whining because he didn't have the vision or business
chops to create something great on his own. Woz was an idiot who would have
given Apple's original technology away and NOTHING would have come from it as
a result. If you enjoy Apple's products at all you should thank Steve. Woz was
replaceable as Apple's history has shown; they have grown immensely without
his involvement.

------
tn13
There is also matter of perspective here. Woz is that hardware/software genius
and hence what he means by "knowing to code" is really different than the
person who asked the question. Woz seems to have interpreted it as "knowing
some programming language to the extent of making some significant
contribution".

------
jt2190
Can someone explain to me why I should care whether Steve Jobs could code or
not? Is there some lesson to learn here?

~~~
MrBra
Could you explain us why you read the article if you already knew you wouldn't
care ?

------
KeepTalking
Does it really matter whether he knew to code or not ? Job's area of
brilliance was complimenting to Woz's technical competence and they both
managed to stay "generally" out of each others way yet focused on the same
goal.

------
known
"The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists
in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the
unreasonable man." \--George Bernard Shaw

------
NDizzle
Woz is a badass.

------
pbreit
Thought experiment: which was more likely, Jobs being successful without Woz
or Woz being successful without Jobs?

I put my net worth on Jobs.

------
simonebrunozzi
What's Steve Wozniak's email?

------
cesarfarias
It's all logic and imagination.

------
FridayWithJohn
Silly title. It should be "Did".

~~~
millerm
No, it's the title of the original post.

------
Ynot_82
"Does", as opposed to "Did"?

Cue jokes about dead code, bit-rot, etc.

------
spiritplumber
Apple founder guy who specialized in bullshit is dead. Apple founder guy who
specialized in real work is alive. Insert witty Kurt Vonnegut quote here.

