
Apparently, Mark Zuckerberg Still Writes Code - jasonlbaptiste
http://techcrunch.com/2010/04/14/apparently-mark-zuckerberg-still-writes-code/
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philwelch
"I wonder when Bill Gates last wrote code for shipping products, and if that
was 5+ years after Microsoft launched."

Microsoft was founded in 1975. Gates cowrote DONKEY.BAS, which was released in
1981: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DONKEY.BAS>

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wallflower
If you doubt BillG's technical acumen:

A Joel Spolsky classic story, "My First BillG Review"

"Bill came in...

He had my spec in his hand.

 _He had my spec in his hand!_ "

<http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2006/06/16.html>

~~~
wheaties
Thanks. That was a good read I hadn't read before. It's so very true. Non-
software people shouldn't run software shops unless they can delegate to
someone who is.

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cmelbye
This brings up a question that I've been wondering lately. Does Steve Jobs
code, or did he simply bring business skills to the table when Apple was
starting out?

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jasonlbaptiste
From what i understand he has a knowledge of CS, but didnt delve into code at
apple. From Mortiz' book, I can tell he did write code for Atari.

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baddox
He reportedly claimed to have read Knuth's The Art of Computer Programming,
which would certainly require some serious CS and mathematics chops to
comprehend.

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philwelch
"It's a pleasure to meet you, Professor Knuth," Steve said. "I've read all of
your books."

"You're full of shit," Knuth responded.

[http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Close_Encounters_of_t...](http://folklore.org/StoryView.py?story=Close_Encounters_of_the_Steve_Kind.txt)

~~~
culled
There's a Google talk that Randall Munroe did. Knuth was there and Munroe
asked him about that story, Knuth seemed to deny it.

~~~
gjm11
"Full of shit" seems a very un-Knuth-y expression.

[edited to add: I should of course just have called it "unknuth", but my pun-
sense wasn't quick enough on the mark.]

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gojomo
Blake Ross can't see Mark Zuckerberg's commits? What kind of silo'd operation
do they have?

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blakeross
I can see Mark's commits. It's just much easier to ask him what it is when
it's 2am and I'm not VPN'd into our corporate network.

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gojomo
Good to know! (I was teasing, mainly, but did wonder a bit if Mark's coy
response was pure affect or not.)

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drp
F8 is a conference, right? Doesn't this probably just mean he wrote some demo
code, not real product code?

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thorax
Unit tests, though-- not super common to write those for demo code, right?

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lrm242
Why not, you want the demo code to work, right?

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thorax
Obviously it's better, but I'm not so sure it's common.

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10ren
Programmers should be like barristers or brain surgeons - you don't promote
the best into management, you hire a manager. Like Fred's surgical team.

But it's not like that, because, I think, the main usefulness of programming
is not in the code, but in the recognition of the problem to solve. ie.
business

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emehrkay
I would too. It must be a lot easier having that many smart people to help
you, the CEO, out

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flyosity
And by "still writes code" does he mean "was paid to write someone else's
social network, took that code and committed it to Facebook instead"?

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swah
Respect.

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bprater
My first thought: is this the most effective way that the CEO of one of the
web's biggest companies should be spending his time? Hacking is fun, sure, but
I'm not sure I want the captain of my ship down greasing the engine.

Everything sends a signal and I suspect his maturity isn't quite there when
posting to Twitter (er, or does he use Facebook?) about a check-in. If this
were a public company and I were a shareholder, I would wonder.

A secret of success: do only the things that _only you_ are capable of doing,
like shaking hands and making deals. Let everyone else handle the rest.

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pgbovine
_A secret of success: do only the things that you are capable of doing, like
shaking hands and making deals._

I hardly think that this is all that zuckerberg is capable of doing, since he
was the one who initially hacked on facebook (as well as some music sharing
program in high school, iirc)

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wallflower
"With a classmate, Adam D’Angelo (now a student at CalTech and still a close
friend) Zuckerberg designed a program that learned a listener’s musical
tastes, and then designed a playlist to match.

“It learned your listening patterns by figuring out how much you like each
song at a given point and time, and which songs you tend to listen to around
each other,” Zuckerberg says.

The friends created a plug-in for the popular MP3 player WinAmp and posted it
up for free on the Internet."

"When Zuckerberg starts a programming project, all else takes a backseat. He
doesn’t eat, doesn’t sleep, doesn’t talk to friends."

[http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/6/10/mark-e-
zuckerber...](http://www.thecrimson.com/article/2004/6/10/mark-e-
zuckerberg-06-the-whiz/)

~~~
fuzzmeister
Further: "Microsoft and AOL tried to purchase Synapse and recruit Zuckerberg,
but he decided to attend Harvard University instead."

The guy was almost recruited out of high school by Microsoft and AOL. If that
isn't impressive, I don't know what is.

