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Letter from Steve Wozniak to a high school student in Korea
- danso 14y agoWoz is such a generous, stand-up soul that he should be famous for that alone, even if he were just a mediocre engineer. The fact that he was also one of the greatest hackers in his time is just a bizarre, but welcome anomaly of tech history.
- wallflower 14y agoJL posted her interview of Woz on the Founders at Work website. It's one of my favorites in the book (need to buy another copy, gave away my last one) because you really get a sense of the pure hacker/engineering genius/engineering spirit Woz is. The floppy drive story is priceless. http://www.foundersatwork.com/steve-wozniak.html http://www.foundersatwork.com/steve-wozniak.html
- mhandley 14y agoI hadn't read that before - it's a really good read. Thanks!
- arjn 14y agoLove the Woz. A extraordinary combination of quiet genius, generosity and humility.
- dakrisht 14y agoGotta love Woz. So humble, such a brilliant mind, a pure hacker at heart. Need more guys like him and less turds like Mark Pincus (first one that comes to mind).
- philh 14y ago> less turds like Mark Pincus Does that sound like the sort of thing Woz would say?
- hkmurakami 14y agoAlas that's why there's so few beings like Woz.
- dba7dba 14y agoWhile reading 'Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days' I found out Steve W. gave some of his (very valuable) stocks while in Apple to fellow employees (some fresh out of college) just because he thought they deserved it for working so hard. Great dude.
- alexholehouse 14y agoI've said it before, and I'll say it again, Woz is the catalyst that pushed me into programming, and that is something I'm perpetually thankful for. I should write him a note...
- jmspring 14y agoThe Woz model - engineering as a fulfillment of curiousity is powerful. It is often hard to make the leap towards understanding what to commercialize...
- corwinstephen 14y agoEver been quoted before? ^^ Worth quoting.
- grinich 14y agoYou really should. Hearing that sort of thing doesn't get old. I'll bet he would appreciate it.
- seferphier 14y agoVery worthwhile. I'm sure he would be glad to hear from you.
- 6ren 14y ago> ... never want to tell one story in different ways. \tangent I know what he's talking about (spinning the truth), so the following is not addressing what he meant, it's just that the bald statement irks me so: when explaining something to somebody, it can be very helpful to express it in familiar terms and concepts that they already understand. You might need to customise the story for each person, and the change might be much more than just a few words, but premised on entirely different concepts. It's more like: you have a map and you know their intended destination. It's not helpful to just tell them where they should be; nor even to just explain one way to get there (one story). Better to find out where they are, and then give them directions in terms of that. (from my stint as an ugrad tutor/demonstrator).
- sgloutnikov 14y agoLoved every word of that, great guy! "The best things I did in my young years leading up to the early Apple computers were done because I had little money and had to think deeply to achieve the impossible." On a side note, I think this is why more (and arguably better) hackers come out of Eastern Europe/Asia.
- digitalengineer 14y agoYes having only "little money" forced Woz to really focus, think and experiment. However, I'm sure living in the same neighbourhood/city as people from IBM, Intel, HewlettPackard, etc wasn't bad either ;-)
- sgloutnikov 14y agoOh clearly! And how much easier it was back then to simply walk into HP for example, and talk to these people directly.
- dimadima 14y agoSteve Wozniak or Mister Rogers? Wtf?
- ars 14y agoIs the upside down signature in the original?
- myhf 14y agoYes, it's his normal email signature.
- nnnnni 14y agoOh, you didn't hear? He lives in Australia now.
- maximveksler 14y agoCoolest thing ever. Adopted.
- pajju 14y agoNoticed the signature at the end, the sign of one of the greatest hackers of our times. Kudos sir.
- gingerlime 14y ago"You are recognized by your own skills and good work, and you don‘t have to criticize others for not doing good work. Just worry about your own skills." Reading from inspiring people like Wozniak makes me wonder how to adopt such advice. I am wondering about that almost every time I review a pull request. How do you deal with bad code, poor comments or over-engineering when you see it? Of course you can be nice, but then code and product quality would end up affected. How do you balance this thing?? The person being reviewed knows it's not personal, but it too often becomes a battle of egos. I would be really interested to find ways to become a better programmer by being nicer without bending over or compromising on professional integrity. Any suggestions?
- pagade 14y agoOne (little cunning) advice I received to deal with 'battle of egos' was to introduce a third person, a third reviewer to break the tie. Ideally the person should be one to whom you both respect (due to authority or whatever) and are ready to take his/her word. Cunning part can be he/she should be the one you know will agree with your review comments/thoughts (which should be easy since you know your concerns are valid). This is assuming such battles are rare and people are open for genuine review comments.
- obstacle1 14y ago> Of course you can be nice, but then code and product quality would end up affected. Why? This attitude baffles me. You don't have to be a dick when reviewing someone's code, terrible or not. > The person being reviewed knows it's not personal It absolutely is personal if you make it personal, i.e. start personally insulting the author. "How could you be so stupid to write this this way?" "This is really idiotic code." "Sorry, this dumb way of doing things is dumb, and I don't approve of dumb things in my project." All of the above are personally insulting comments. You should not make comments like them if you value being civil. There are plenty of ways to reject code without being a complete dick. For example: "This is pretty neat, but I don't think it fits in here because _________" "I really appreciate the commit, but _________ doesn't quite work with _______ idea." "This is a great start. Could you change _____________ to meld better with ________?" All non-confrontational ways to say "sorry, this isn't good enough" while also offering positive feedback.
- beambot 14y agoComputer apps are not to be judged by what they do or how well they do it. Rather, it is more important that they feel natural to normal humans and they are led to the right actions. This statement makes me sad... but I cannot articulate exactly why. Edit: I like the essay in general. It's very motivating. It would have been great advice when in highschool.
- hobs 14y agoIts because like many nerds, you love to program, and you love THE program. I find that many technical people actually find that while they keep solving technical problems, the people problem never goes away with their software. We treat people as idiots and act in condescending manners because we think they are too dumb to use our software or computers in general, but the truth is our software is dumb and a lot of us dont want to change it.
- beambot 14y agoI don't think that's it... Woz talks about internalizing and owning his own thoughts throughout the article, then implies that computer programs (that presumably the student could / should build) ought to be tailored to everyone else's mental models. It seems contradictory. I'd much rather hear something like, "Build something you love using... that's easy for you to use."
- WillP 14y agoI'm impressed by how well the response was written. Every sentence seemed to be written in a very unambiguous way. The phrasing may have been awkward, but was very appropriate for a Korean audience.
- pshin45 14y agoGood point, his email reply got me wondering how familiar he is with Korea and whether he was deliberately tailoring his message for a Korean audience as well. He talks about not learning from books, not caring about what others think about you, choosing a company based on how they treat you and not how "hot" they are - These are all the complete opposite of what Korea values and the way most Koreans live (book-learning, image-conscious, brand names over personal satisfaction).
- pshin45 14y agoI'm living in Korea right now and I'm fascinated as to how and why Woz decided to reply to this Korean high school student's email, of all the emails he could've replied to, and how often he does this for people. So random but so awesome. And what an amazing and thoughtful reply it was, especially considering how lately Woz has become known more for being a loose cannon criticizing Apple in the press, than for his (amazing) previous accomplishments. Not to mention his portrayal in Steve Jobs' biography was less than glowing.
- austenallred 14y agoI think my favorite part of every Woz letter and email is how he signs his name upside down. There's not much more endearing than the playfulness and wonder that somehow conveys.
- simplon 14y agoyeah i saw that too.. thought it was really cool..
- enraged_camel 14y agoYou are recognized by your own skills and good work, and you don‘t have to criticize others for not doing good work. Just worry about your own skills. Wozniak is a very technically brilliant guy, and I have the utmost level of respect for him. But the sentence I quoted above just shows that he's also a stereotypical "nerd" in a lot of ways [1], in the sense that he has a very poor understanding of how humans operate, both at the individual level and the organizational level. Specifically, just worrying about your own skills is not enough most of the time, especially if you work in any kind of team setting where success requires every team member to pull their own weight. If someone is fucking up constantly and ruining your team's objectives and deliverables, you need to let them know. You can be nice about it if you want, but if you actually care about your work then you absolutely cannot "just worry about your own skills." Heck, this isn't true for just companies. I think every one of us has had group assignments in college where one person just didn't do the work or did it incorrectly. Someone like Woz might have let it go, because people who are taught by their parents to be "nice" tend to avoid confrontation due to the unpleasant feelings it brings. But the right thing to do - both morally and otherwise - is to criticize the person for slacking off and file a formal complaint if they don't start performing. In fact, now that I think about it, that's probably why he didn't call out Jobs on it when he found out that Jobs screwed him out of $5,000 back in the day. He just didn't have the confidence to fight wrongdoings, even when he was directly hurt by them (granted, Jobs was Woz's polar opposite in the sense that he had an extremely strong personality, one that would have crushed Woz's). Also remember that when he built the first Apple computer, he wanted to give it away for free because he was just a nice guy. It was Jobs who was a lot more grounded in reality and convinced Woz that they needed to sell it for money. [1]I put it in quotes because I'm not using it as a pejorative.
- nnq 14y ago> The teller doesn’t feel that the truth about how they are and how they act is not good ...did the transcriber double negate this by mistake or is my head spinning the wrong way?
- pedalpete 14y agoIs there a better modern sage than Woz?
- bluedino 14y agoI didn't know anything about computer languages except—a friend of mine had gone to MIT and, while he was there, he would Xerox pages out of books that were good topics, and he had sent me a lot of pages back from compiler design books. I wonder if MIT knew about students sharing information with the outside world 40 years ago. If this copyright violation would have not happened, we'd be in a world without Apple computer, or at least Apple BASIC.
- cma 14y agohttp://www.copyright.com/Services/copyrightoncampus/content/index.html http://www.copyright.com/Services/copyrightoncampus/content/...