
Interview with Steve Wozniak - sohkamyung
https://theconversation.com/interview-steve-wozniak-apple-co-founder-and-inventor-of-the-home-computer-64313
======
wallflower
One of favorite interviews of Steve Wozniak is still the one by jl in Founders
at Work.

[http://www.foundersatwork.com/steve-
wozniak.html](http://www.foundersatwork.com/steve-wozniak.html)

> When I got done, I'm looking at these 2 floppies that look just the same.
> And I decided that I might have written onto the good one from the bad, and
> I did. So I had lost it all. I went back to my hotel room. I slept for a
> while. I got up about 10:00 a.m. or so. I sat down and, out of my head and
> my listings, recreated everything, got it working again, and we showed it at
> the show. It was a huge hit. Everybody was saying, "Oh my God, Apple has a
> floppy!" It just looked beautiful, plugged into a slot on our computer. We
> were able to say "run color math," and it just runs instantly. It was a
> change in time.

But the real eureka moment for me was the very first time I ever read data
back. I wrote it on the floppy, which was easy, but read it back, got it
right. I just died.

~~~
aculver
This is insanely great reading. I love how old-school technical it is. I
haven't finished reading yet, but my favorite quote so far:

> "What advice would you give to hackers who are thinking about starting a
> company or making something on their own?"

> "Wozniak: First of all, try to have the highest of ethics and to be open and
> truthful about things, not hiding. If you have to hide something for company
> reasons, at least explain what you're doing. Don't mislead people. Know in
> your heart that you are a good person with good goals because that will
> carry over to your own self-confidence and your belief in your engineering
> abilities. Always seek excellence: make your product better than the average
> person would."

~~~
duncanawoods
I love that quote too. To add to "always seek excellence", here is his "how":

> Livingston: What is the key to excellence for an engineer?

> Wozniak: You have to be very diligent. You have to check every little
> detail. You have to be so careful that you haven't left something out. You
> have to think harder and deeper than you normally would. It's hard with
> today's large, huge programs.

How many times on HN do we hear about actual engineering excellence vs. the
hack, the weekend mvp, the "if your product doesn't embarrass you, you've
released too late" dogma?

~~~
sdoering
> if your product doesn't embarrass you, you've released too late

In the age of shallow work, this is the dogma, that justifies shitty things
being released as a philosophy of continuous improvement.

In my opinion no lasting and great product can be built that way. Only more
shitty things that flood our market. You collect feedback on your shitty app
and implement optimization? How does that differ from design by committee?

To be timeless and produce the highes possible quality you have to go deep,
understand the problem you are trying to solve and solve it once and for all.

Solve it to and above the best ability you can bring to the table at exactly
that moment in time.

~~~
overcast
You ever see the first few versions of Facebook and Twitter?
[http://makers.crew.co/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/OG-
Twitter....](http://makers.crew.co/wp-content/uploads/2016/03/OG-Twitter.png)

The point is, if you have a good idea, regardless of how complete it is, get
it out there and see if it warrants going further.

~~~
Retric
I don't think you can defend Facebook or Twitter as timeless or high quality.
Even Google is kind of meh at a technical level.

~~~
overcast
I was directly responding to "In my opinion no lasting and great product can
be built that way." Facebook, Twitter, and certainly Google have been proven
to be long lasting. Google is ubiquitous at this point!

~~~
Retric
Android for example is good enough, but far from Great IMO. Granted, this is
all subjective but an overhead sprinkler whose sensor is a part that
melts/deforms with heat is timeless solution that just works (1879
[https://www.google.com/patents/US218564](https://www.google.com/patents/US218564))
. An electronic sensor could work, but has far more failure modes. Now compare
this with say Facebook whose design regularly undergoes significant revision.

------
girvo
> He has previously talked enthusiastically about the investment of the
> Queensland Government of A$405 million in the startup scene.

While the Advance Queensland Summit was interesting, I've been in Brisbane
long enough to know that I shouldn't believe it until I see it. At the end of
the day, the amount of "non-startups" that claim these grants, and the
struggle of those who actually _do_ run startups to get access to this sort of
funding has left me rather cynical...

~~~
ajdlinux
I'm involved with an organisation that recently tried to get an Advance
Queensland grant for non-profit outreach/education events relating to
startups/entrepreneurship (Young Starters' Fund).

We were considered ineligible to apply on the grounds that we weren't GST-
registered. Now, we're a registered charity that operates on a budget that is
far, far, far under the threshold where GST registration is mandated by
federal law. In fact, we're so far under the threshold that all our accounting
is done by our volunteer committee - being registered for GST would massively
increase our administrative workload, which is why we don't do it.

Seems well intentioned but... a bit bureaucratic.

~~~
girvo
Your story is so similar to those I've both experienced and watched play out
over and over again...

> Seems well intentioned but... a bit bureaucratic.

QLD government tech investment in a nutshell, really.

------
danso
Here's hoping that Woz pops in at the invocation of his name!

[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=stevewoz](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=stevewoz)

(I'm referencing this memorable AskFilter thread:
[http://ask.metafilter.com/47835/Woz-More-like-Was-am-I-
rite#...](http://ask.metafilter.com/47835/Woz-More-like-Was-am-I-rite#728258))

------
coldtea
It's interesting that for every public interview/article about Steve Wozniak,
there are several people quick to label him a "has-been".

A further irony being that they themselves are "never-even-was-in-the-first-
place-and-will-probably-never-be" (which I'd argue is worse than being a "has
been").

~~~
camillomiller
By that standard nobody would ever be allowed to criticize anybody who got in
a position of success or power, though, just because "they achieved more than
you, sucker".

Although I really think Woz is a great guy and that we historically owe him A
LOT, one can't understate the fact that he's been operatively absent from the
industry for a long time. His comments on Apple come from insights that are
quite stale. He might have his own good friends inside the company, but he's
certainly not an insider in Cupertino anymore. He often lets journalists paint
him as such, though.

I respect his insights on the industry at large, because he has certainly seen
a lot and done a loto. Even those comments are a bit nicked by his shallow
consulting jobs that in the last 10-15 years never really led to anything
relevant, since they were probably well paid stunts payed by companies who
wanted to enroll a big name to wow investors at pitches.

Edit - I want to be clearer: this is a friendly critic coming from someone who
still loves Woz and has him on the personal list of "IT celebrities who would
be amazing to hang out with". I also want to stress that I don't really blame
him for this management of his late image. I just won't give a huge amount of
weight to his sharpest statements as publications often do.

~~~
coldtea
> _By that standard nobody would ever be allowed to criticize anybody who got
> in a position of success or power, though, just because "they achieved more
> than you, sucker"._

I'm not sure how someone can even begin to get that from my comment.

By the standard that I wrote, nobody would be allowed to criticise someone as
a "has been". And especially if they they haven't achieved much themselves
either. Period.

I didn't say anything about people not "being allowed to criticize anybody who
got in a position of success or power" in general.

I believe that one can criticize Woz (or anyone other in power/success/etc)
all you want. Just not as a "has been", which doesn't really have any content
as a critique anyway, and is basically an ad hominem. Want to criticize Woz?
Find something specific to criticize.

> _Although I really think Woz is a great guy and that we historically owe him
> A LOT, one can 't understate the fact that he's been operatively absent from
> the industry for a long time._

So? How does that make them any less valid than anybody's arguments (e.g. in
this thread)? I don't know, and don't care whether you or others in this
thread have been "operatively present" in the industry recently or not -- I
just care about their arguments.

If rather you mean "Just because he is Woz, we shouldn't give more credit to
what he says over anybody else", then that kind of goes without saying, it's
the content that really matters, not the person.

------
rezashirazian
_Asked about Apple’s new app Swift Playgrounds, aimed at teaching entry level
programming in the language Swift, he thinks that there may have been better
languages to start with._

I haven't had a chance to play with Swift Playground on iPad but Swift as a
language itself is a lot fun. I wonder what languages he would favor over
Swift for kids who might be interested in programming.

~~~
suyash
I agree with Woz, Swift is too advanced and complicated for kids. They are
better starting out with MIT Scratch or something like that.

~~~
67726e
I really dislike the whole "starts kids with toy language" thing. My first
language was 6502 assembly, and I genuinely think it's a good place to start.
I'm not saying that to try and elevate myself, none of the "I walked uphill
both ways to school in the snow" type shit.

An assembly that is fairly simple teaches so many fundamentals and at the same
time is about is easy to learn as it gets. No crazy syntax, no OOP bullshit,
no ceremony and boilerplate bullshit. It's as simple as it gets. Instructions
and data.

I know so many people who learned Python and Java in early CS classes and then
had their fucking minds blown and experienced so much pain just understanding
the concept of a pointer. I remember my packed highschool "Intro to
Programming" class where we started with VB and that was a struggle so they
switched to one of those "Visual Programming for Kids" which became even more
of a hassle for everyone.

When I try to learn anything new I want to distill it down to the most basic,
core concepts and build from there. Doesn't matter if it's learning a
framework, learning bass, or woodworking. Whatever happened to "keep it simple
stupid"?

~~~
jjtheblunt
totally agree for exact same reasons

------
stesch
"Steve – it is Steve, right? You say this gadget of yours is for ordinary
people. What on earth would ordinary people want with computers?"

------
h43k3r
This talk[1] of Woz at Google is one of my favorites and motivated me a lot to
learn engineering in a diligent way. His love for electronics and engineering
is evident from the way he talks about it.

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctGch5ejjT4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ctGch5ejjT4)

------
unimpressive
>inventor of the home computer

 _hissssss_

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_8800](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Altair_8800)

EDIT: The earlier title on HN said that Steven Wozniak was the 'inventor of
the home computer' with no qualifications, the title has now been changed but
HN won't let me delete the comment.

~~~
alayne
Did you mean to say the 1950 Simon?

[http://www.blinkenlights.com/pc.shtml](http://www.blinkenlights.com/pc.shtml)

~~~
CamperBob2
They meant "Inventor of the home computer," not "Inventor of one of several
obscure, complex devices that might be referred to as a 'computer,' found in
the basements of a negligible number of professional engineers, scientists,
and extremely advanced hobbyists."

By that definition, Woz is the best candidate for the job description. I could
publish an article tomorrow describing how to build an inflatable sheep that
runs TensorFlow, but that won't entitle me to claim I invented the first
sentient sexbot.

~~~
alayne
So discussing earlier personal computers is equivalent to the absurdity of
inflatable sheep. Brilliant commentary.

~~~
coldtea
It saddens me when people don't get the point of a metaphor, and instead lean
on the metaphor to discard the argument behind.

In this case, the point of the metaphor was to say that something obscure and
barely sold/marketed is not a valid candidate for the "first X", where X, like
"home computer" implies adoption.

Whether the parent used inflatable sheep or VCRs or thermometers as their
metaphor is besides the point -- as the core of the analogy (the argument)
remains the same.

It's also obvious that he used the sheep analogy for extra color/fun.

~~~
Teever
I also dislike this and I've often wondered if there is a word to describe
this occurence.

------
foxhedgehog
Am I going to be downvoted if I puncture the largely laudatory bubble around
Woz at all?

~~~
aculver
Not at all. You'll be down voted because this comment doesn't substantiate
your claim and doesn't add anything to the discussion.

~~~
foxhedgehog
Sorry, I thought that I was asking a question and not promoting a claim. In
any case, thank you for answering it, though perhaps not in the manner
intended.

~~~
throwanem
You asked a question that implicitly advances a claim, and it's disingenuous
to pretend you don't know that.

~~~
foxhedgehog
Surely, in that case, you can vocalize what that claim was.

~~~
throwanem
Of course I can. But no one needs me to.

Is it really worthy of you to play this kind of game?

~~~
foxhedgehog
I do.

