[HN Gopher] There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him
___________________________________________________________________
There's only one Woz, but we can all learn from him
Author : coloneltcb
Score : 301 points
Date : 2026-01-23 17:48 UTC (5 days ago)
(HTM) web link (www.fastcompany.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.fastcompany.com)
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| 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.
| ares623 wrote:
| Everyone chooses the wrong Steve to worship.
| Aloha wrote:
| If you're an engineer, you should admire Woz, if you're a
| product manager or marketeer, Jobs.
|
| Jobs was a brilliant product manager and marketeer - every
| bit as brilliant as Woz is an engineer.
|
| The truth is, the sharpest engineers struggle to make a
| marketable consumer product - because they make it for
| themselves, and while thats quite laudable, however it's
| generally a tiny market compared to one targeted at normal
| people.
| nekooooo wrote:
| true. woz made a $900 universal remote in 1987. it could
| control 256 devices via IR and was programmable via PC at a
| time when you probably had 1 device in your house (with 7
| channels.) Maybe 2 if you had a tape player. He clearly
| made it for himself and his sick component system.
| keiferski wrote:
| I admire both and I find the push to Pick a Steve Team
| really irritating.
| fragmede wrote:
| Both, the sum is greater than the parts. Neither of them
| would be there without the other.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| 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 products doing well with growth from there.
|
| The longer that structure can be maintained, the better.
|
| Most of the time a miraculous salesman or marketing
| strategist has an average to below-average product to
| represent, and they will still do very well.
|
| So well in fact, that they themselves may never find out
| what the full upside would be if they had a product that
| actually was above-average enough for it to be able to
| sell on its own one way or another. And then act as a
| multiplier to that.
|
| Through the roof can be hard to avoid then.
|
| Same business plan I had as a preteen, way before Apple
| got going.
| al_borland wrote:
| 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
| entrepreneur. His footnotes would be most people's whole
| career. His talent wasn't just sales, but also building
| teams of talented people and selling them on his vision.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| I fully agree, Jobs was like the ideal founder.
|
| 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?
| caycep wrote:
| And it's not always a sure thing. NeXT would have failed
| without Apple 2.0.
| p00dles wrote:
| 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 - especially given how many people idolize and look
| up to Jobs.
| microtherion wrote:
| The other huge, huge difference is that one of the Steves
| has demonstrated he was able to build a successful
| product without the other's assistance.
| fuzzfactor wrote:
| You could say that about the iPod or the iPhone which Woz
| wasn't involved in, but when you do the math, _there 's
| only one Woz_ and he was essential to define the company
| in the 20th century, and look how many people it took to
| "replace" him when it came to Jobs "alone" defining the
| company in the 21st century.
| microtherion wrote:
| You could also say it about the Mac, which Woz was, at
| best, peripherally involved in. Not saying that Jobs
| created these products "alone" -- he obviously did not.
| But he was a key contributor.
|
| Meanwhile, Woz has been involved in all sorts of
| products, including a cryptocurrency, and I can't think
| of a single one that got significant traction.
| lynx97 wrote:
| And still, when it comes to built-in accessibility, Jobs
| is pretty much famous for his "fuck ROI" statement. He
| set precedence around 2007, which eventually forced other
| players like Google and Microsoft to follow. These days,
| Talkback and Narrator are builtin for both OSes, which is
| mostly because Apple went there first. This move changed
| the lifes of a a few million people.
| hyperhello wrote:
| Jobs dealt with people and respected the machines. Woz
| dealt with machines and respected the people.
| hobs wrote:
| Jobs fucked over a lot of people and respected the
| machines. Woz dealt with the machines and respected the
| people.
| mrexcess wrote:
| >Jobs fucked over a lot of people
|
| Oft repeated, and not untrue, but very incomplete.
|
| Jobs also _made_ a lot of people. A lot of fortunes in
| SilVal only exist because of Steve Jobs.
|
| He also virtually single handedly and without much
| fanfare at the time or credit in the history books
| created the employee compensation model that came to
| define SilVal success, with workaday employees and
| especially engineering contributors receiving stock
| options to reward them and keep them invested in the
| company's success.
| apparent wrote:
| I don't disagree with what you say, but I have literally
| never seen or heard "SilVal". Is this a common shorthand?
| I hear "the Valley" and see "SV" but never this
| halfcronym.
| hobs wrote:
| Sure, but he was cruel for no reason to many people who
| did not deserve it, I don't even care about his tech
| problems. Nobody should park in the handicap stalls
| without a license plate because he keeps leasing new
| cars.
| tbossanova wrote:
| You need both though. You have to accept there are a
| certain amount of psychopaths in the world, and learn how
| to manage them
| simonh wrote:
| 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.
| f1shy wrote:
| As a person he didn't want to recognize the daughter, if
| I remember correctly.
| mrexcess wrote:
| Everybody makes mistakes, and this is definitely a huge
| one to have made, and a sad aspect of his legacy, but if
| this is all you know about Steve Jobs, you don't know
| anything about Steve Jobs.
|
| He made up with Lisa - to the extent one can after all
| that - in the end. And he raised three other kids, after
| becoming older and wiser as a dad.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| > Everybody makes mistakes, and this is definitely a huge
| one to have made, and a sad aspect of his legacy, but if
| this is all you know about Steve Jobs, you don't know
| anything about Steve Jobs.
|
| > He made up with Lisa - to the extent one can after all
| that - in the end. And he raised three other kids, after
| becoming older and wiser as a dad.
|
| So about this, I remember watching pirates of silicon
| valley when I was in 6th grade and this is something
| which troubles me from watching it (multiple times as it
| was the only offline movie I had so much so that I once
| gave a mini speech in class about steve jobs haha & one
| of my teachesrs started calling me steve jobs haha!)
|
| But in the movie, I _really_ didn 't understand the
| rationale behind what he did to lisa. I mean iirc he did
| try to connect with her later but still, I just don't
| understand why he acted so harshly towards his mother
| when everything could've been going fine.
|
| Like there were definitely plenty of moments in the movie
| where steve jobs wasn't the right guy. I really can't
| find the rationale behind some of the things.
|
| I feel like I still don't know what to make of the whole
| situation regarding Steve jobs. but when you mentioned
| this comment, while reading it I imagined the point where
| Steve jobs offered Lisa a flower.
|
| I remember this because many years after watching the
| movies, this youtube video came to my feed (I searched it
| again by just searching some PoSV related thing with lisa
| flower to find it)
|
| What is the name of this music? (Motion Picture Score):
| [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wm7btLayRZ4]
|
| And even the director of the movie commented in the
| comments of this video which was pinned!
|
| As well as using a lot of 70's & 80's classic rock and
| roll classics appropriate to the era when Jobs and Woz
| were starting Apple, we also went for "sound-alikes" (for
| the Ella Fitzgerald number) and created some of our own
| music. This piece is one of those creations. There is no
| name for it that I'm aware of. Martyn Burke Director-
| Pirates of Silicon Valley
| Miraste wrote:
| I do wonder if it's possible to be a brilliant marketer,
| and reach the levels Jobs did, without being an asshole.
| The core of the profession is learning how to manipulate
| and use people better than anyone else.
| BirAdam wrote:
| This. When Woz created the Apple I and Apple II, the entire
| microcomputer market consisted of hackers, tinkerers,
| enthusiasts, and hobbyists. Had Woz been acting alone, the
| Apple I and Apple II would have made a splash at Homebrew,
| but they wouldn't have been products. Jobs made them
| products. After VisiCalc, this market expanded to finance
| professionals, but it was still a tiny market. It was
| really Raskin and Jobs who proved the viability of the
| Xerox PARC (and SRI before them) advancements around the
| GUI that propelled computing to a more general audience.
| Then, MS caught up, dominated the market in the 1990s, and
| Apple came back only when Jobs returned and began pushing
| industrial design and OS X. From the point until quite
| recently, most companies R&D could have just been attending
| Apple product launches and imitating as best they could
| (that's hyperbolic, but not entirely incorrect).
| Findecanor wrote:
| I have chosen to go by "Take no heroes, only inspiration",
| and take different inspiration from both.
| rainbowcash wrote:
| > The truth is, the sharpest engineers struggle to make a
| marketable consumer product - because they make it for
| themselves, and while thats quite laudable, however it's
| generally a tiny market compared to one targeted at normal
| people.
|
| Woz was perfect for those in the home brew club and Steve
| (basically vagabond) had a different perspective on users.
| It was the perfect combo in hindsight.
| tehnub wrote:
| I worship both thank you very much.
| bko wrote:
| Worshiping Woz is cool, but like the article says, there's
| only one Woz. And chances are you're nothing like Woz or
| Jobs. But Ballmer? That's someone I can look to emulate.
|
| https://medium.com/packt-hub/how-to-be-like-steve-ballmer-
| cf...
| varjag wrote:
| There were/are countless engineers which are very like Woz.
| Just that engineers are worse positioned to reap the
| rewards of commercial success so you rarely hear of them.
| ares623 wrote:
| People who worship Jobs helped make sure of that
| ericmcer wrote:
| You could argue that Apple would exist without Wozniak, but
| it would definitely not without Jobs.
| postalcoder wrote:
| 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.
| omnimus wrote:
| 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".
| SkyMarshal wrote:
| 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.
| al_borland wrote:
| 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.
| leoc wrote:
| He wasn't entirely unworldly though. He didn't like BASIC
| as a language, but he gave the Apple I and II a BASIC
| capable of running the programs from Ahl's _BASIC
| Computer Games_ because that 's what the market was
| demanding.
| postalcoder wrote:
| Woz is a primary figure in one of YC's essential texts. He
| has always been revered here as a founder and as a human.
|
| https://www.amazon.com/Founders-Work-Stories-Startups-
| Early/...
| flomo wrote:
| "Tech Cofounder" who gets edged out before the next funding
| round.
| chairmansteve wrote:
| You are right. But the real world is a messy place. Good
| people do bad things and vice versa. Not many people are
| entirely good or entirely bad.
|
| HN is a very strong net positive IMO. YC could easily
| monetize it into oblivion. They don't.
| bigDinosaur wrote:
| My understanding is that HN _is_ monetized e.g. marketing
| is explicitly permitted by founders etc.
|
| I guess that's not conventional monetisation.
| keeganpoppen wrote:
| i guess you mean ycombinator and not ycombinator... the
| combinator, which is very much the kind of hacker ethos
| this site (and pg's idealized version of the entity) is
| supposed to embody.
| direwolf20 wrote:
| Woz may embody the spirit of hacking but does he really
| embody the spirit of venture capital?
| postalcoder wrote:
| Since when was HN about venture capital?
| Hacker news is designed for and targeted at hackers. In the
| sense of the word that means people who write code, not
| people who break into things. Other people with similar
| tastes also like it. Since it's run by YC and
| the initial users were mostly YC founders, there is
| inevitably a startup spin to the stories that are popular
| here. In fact the site was originally called Startup News.
| But it turned out to be boring to have so much of a startup
| focus, so we changed the name and the focus to be more
| general.
|
| - pg (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1648199)
|
| Also: https://web.archive.org/web/20070624055731/http://www
| .founde...
| paulcole wrote:
| Do you believe all marketing and advertising copy that
| you read?
| postalcoder wrote:
| Look at the questions I'm replying to. They, in one way
| or another, asked me to draw a line between Woz and
| Ycombinator. That's what I did.
|
| Woz has always carried a near perfect approval rate in
| our community. I've never seen anyone come close.
| paulcole wrote:
| Sorry, I was replying to the person who said, "Since when
| was HN about venture capital?" The answer to that is
| obviously since its inception. It's like watching those
| weird flying contraption contests and asking, "Since when
| is Red Bull about energy drinks?"
| postalcoder wrote:
| Oh wait that was me. I mean, yes you're right that vc and
| startups are inextricable. But I'd argue their underlying
| spirit isn't the same.
|
| I realize that's a normative claim. Like the blind men
| and the elephant, we're each touching a different part.
| paulcole wrote:
| > But I'd argue their underlying spirit isn't the same.
|
| And your argument is based on the fact that you'd like
| this to be true as well as the fact that the vc company
| behind this site said, "Trust us bro!"
|
| How is that different from the cow saying, "The farmer
| told us we're walking through a fun maze!"
| postalcoder wrote:
| I may have overthought this and wandered into territory I
| don't actually have strong convictions about. My original
| impulse was simply to show some love for Woz.
| alwa wrote:
| I mean
|
| Marketing budgets can fund stuff whose authenticity is
| independent of who's writing the check, right? Especially
| when their audience is extra-contrarian and sensitive to
| authenticity. Xerox can be an evil megacorp _and also_ be
| sugar daddy to the PARC.
|
| If the fun maze is taking YC's money and using it to
| start a company, sure, I see your point. I'd say (right
| here on YC's digital estate!) probably don't do that.
|
| If the fun maze is the community that's emerged on this
| site, which is indeed something the VC firm sponsors
| (surprisingly cheaply)...
|
| Then in my case, it's different because I frequently walk
| through the fun maze for as long as the maze is fun, then
| I wander back out to my fields. If the maze stopped being
| fun, or started requiring me to set aside my values, I
| would stop coming, and the farmer knows that.
|
| The farmer doesn't prod me, much less sneak up on me with
| a captive bolt. He doesn't try to milk me while I'm
| walking through his maze. If I'm ever considering selling
| my steak, I'll probably apply commercial reasoning to my
| choice of abattoir, regardless of how fun the maze was.
|
| I contribute voluntarily, I enjoy the voluntary
| contributions of others. It's a maze where people want to
| come.
|
| I'd like this to be true, so I contribute to it being
| true, and I observe others contributing to sustaining its
| truth too. Intersubjective belief creates reality!
| paulcole wrote:
| > Marketing budgets can fund stuff whose authenticity is
| independent of who's writing the check, right
|
| I think "follow the money" is the cliche that applies
| here.
|
| > Especially when their audience is extra-contrarian and
| sensitive to authenticity.
|
| I think you mean that the audience likes to think of
| itself as extra-contrarian and sensitive to authenticity?
|
| The audience will talk until they're blue in the face
| about why _this_ marketing project (HN) is so much
| different from and so much more authentic than other
| marketing projects.
|
| The marketing seems to be working on this supposedly
| contrarian and sensitive to authentiity audience!
| DonHopkins wrote:
| I believed all the marketing and advertising copy that
| made me want to buy an Apple ][.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UL7urMIB0G0
| aembleton wrote:
| Maybe Fabrice Bellard could be a candidate.
| jdefr89 wrote:
| Obviously familiar with Fabrice Bellard and his technical
| contributions but it seems like he is a pretty private
| person and he keeps to himself. I don't really know much
| about him as a person.
| mrexcess wrote:
| While I adore Woz - Apple fanboy from way back - it's a bit
| unusual for an aggregator and discussion site to "embody the
| spirit" of a guy who says that he hates business and
| politics, and doesn't like participating in discussions
| involving disagreement.
|
| 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!
| ABCLAW wrote:
| I feel like this was more accurate a long time ago when the
| first rounds of YCombinator hopefuls were all piling in here
| and nerding out. The vibe, tone, and content has dramatically
| shifted towards the finance and ambition side of tech over
| the years.
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| I just watched a Ken Thompson interview when he's 80 years
| old.
|
| My god jolly, I feel like Ken's the person you might be
| referring to.
|
| Wozniak is great as well. Perhaps we (or people?) might
| affiliate him more with Hackernews given he was co-founder of
| a company which many founders within HN might want to achieve
| (or replicate?)
|
| But the other way I view HN is a place of curiosity, a place
| of tinkering. I saw the interview of Ken Thompson and I don't
| know about you guys, but Ken Thompson talked in his interview
| about how when he was in between houses at a hotel when he
| was in high school, and there were girls who he used to wave
| at so he was half-way through to making essentially a
| pixelated device through which he could write letters (from
| what I remember from his interview)
|
| I personally have done something similar although from a
| software side and not with a hardware side. But I feel like
| after 70 years, the transition from hardware to software is
| one which is understandable :)
|
| I mean... Ken's 80 year old and really sharp. I only saw him
| thinking about things literally 70 year old just once almost
| like loading things into his mind at the start of interview
| and he was effortless afterwards talking about it.
|
| I don't know enough about wozniak to qualify him for this
|
| But what I can say was that today I was watching the Ken
| Thompson interview and literally after 15-30 minutes of the 4
| hour interview. I was like, _this belongs on hackernews_ and
| submitted it here. (Not sure if this counts as promotion but
| seriously everyone just watch this interview of Ken
| Thompson!)
|
| Video link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=309siTvApbY
|
| Hackernews discussion I submitted (Currently zero response
| after 8 hours tho)
| [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46793919] Kenneth Lane
| Thompson, 1983 ACM Turing Award Recipient (Video Interview)
|
| SO I don't know if there's a particular reason why my HN
| submission about got literally 0 response after 8 hours or if
| because of it, Ken Thompson wouldn't qualify for it. But I am
| gonna be honest and say that in my mind, Ken Thompson's the
| legend which really embodies the HN spirit. Not sure if other
| parts of HN community also feel so but I still feel that they
| do even though there was no response on the HN post (could
| just be the timing at what I posted and many other things)
| but yea.
|
| I highly recommend everyone to go watch the interview if you
| have 4-5 hours of free time right now.
| appplication wrote:
| I was behind Woz in Heathrow security a few years back. I was
| taken aback he'd just be in the regular airport security line
| given he's probably worth 1B+. I asked him if he was who I
| thought he was (he was wearing a face mask, but it was printed
| with a picture of his own face on it so I wasn't sure). He said
| yes and asked if I wanted to take a selfie. Very humble dude.
| rsanek wrote:
| I think his net worth is probably a couple of orders of
| magnitude lower https://swipefile.com/steve-wozniak-co-
| founder-of-apple-on-h...
| dhosek wrote:
| Even 7 zeros is pretty much you can do what you want
| anytime you want. Ten million dollars sitting in a bank
| account earning 3% is 25k a month and nobody with those
| kinds of assets is leaving them in a bank account earning
| 3%.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| To me he's second only to stallman for me. Woz is an
| engineering genius, but stallman is pretty much the reason
| we're on this site right now in a way
| checker659 wrote:
| Care to explain?
| volkercraig wrote:
| 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 interoptability unless a
| business decides to form a strategic partnership.
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| > 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.
| f1shy wrote:
| That said the previous post.
|
| >> 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?
| mghackerlady wrote:
| Sure it was free (as in beer) but was it free (as in
| speech?) Could you modify and improve the compiler? If
| you did, could you redistribute it? Knowing bell labs,
| the answer is a definite no to the last one
| PaulDavisThe1st wrote:
| Provided to _whom_ ?
|
| Most of that stuff was made available to universities and
| colleges as institutions, but not to individual students.
| Once you graduate, you have no effective (or legal)
| access to it anymore ...
| DonHopkins wrote:
| Even after Sun got a C++ compiler for free for internal
| use (but not by their customers) by jumping into bed with
| AT&T, they still hired Michael Tiemann of Cygnus Support
| to port G++ to Solaris.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| Without Stallman there wouldn't be GNU, so the operating
| system used to host this site and the majority of the web
| wouldn't exist. The compiler used to build that operating
| system wouldn't exist. The free software movement that
| later birthed its little cousin "open source" wouldn't
| exist, neither would the free culture movement to some
| extent. The ideals of the free software movement inspired
| the architects of the World Wide Web to make it a freely
| available technology, so without stallman the net would be
| vastly different, likely staying fragmented between
| different protocols like it used to be. Plus, the operating
| system you're using likely has some GNU stuff in it
| somewhere
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| Most of that is incorrect and revisionist history. The
| Web was developed on a commercial system (the NExT from
| Steve Job's company) and initial implementations were
| made on various commercial systems by differing groups.
| Even today, Linux is at most 50% of the web servers on
| the Internet.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| It was developed on a proprietary system (free software
| can be commercial) and yes, various implementations were
| made on said proprietary systems, but there were always
| free ones like lynx (the oldest browser still in
| development). Plus, Tim Berners-Lee was likely inspired
| by the GNU and BSD projects when he made the protocol
| royalty free
| davisr wrote:
| It's not revisionist. The entire NeXT codebase was
| literally compiled with GCC.
| mghackerlady wrote:
| There's even a funny story in there about how NeXT almost
| bypassed the GPL until GNU got Lawyers involved since
| them using a loophole would be very bad for peoples
| freedom
| mghackerlady wrote:
| Linux is at most 88 percent of servers, since windows is
| only estimated to be used on 11% of servers and the other
| unices aren't used outside of very specific circumstances
| Imustaskforhelp wrote:
| > Linux is at most 88 percent of servers, since windows
| is only estimated to be used on 11% of servers and the
| other unices aren't used outside of very specific
| circumstances
|
| I wanted to comment on this. Please correct me if I am
| wrong as I used LLM sources to find
|
| So from what I can find (from human searches) was that
| https://commandlinux.com/statistics/linux-web-server-
| market-... Linux is indeed ~55%
|
| But the other thing is that some servers (from Chatgpt, I
| am not gonna lie) it says that there's an Unknown/CDN
| servers around 20 or more% (I feel like its more) to then
| reach the ~88% data estimate in some sense.
|
| So can someone please clarify me on this if this is the
| true case or not?
| TacoCommander wrote:
| You used to have to pay for UNIX just like you pay for
| Microsoft Windows
| pavlov wrote:
| Woz is great, but I'd still go for Alan Kay.
| rainbowcash wrote:
| Great mention of Alan Kay - however I enjoy hearing from them
| both. Both have an infectious enthusiasm for teaching and
| making things so dang simple. I enjoy coming back to their
| talks and learning something new
| doanbactam wrote:
| 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 elegance over brute
| force is exactly what's missing in modern engineering.
| nekooooo wrote:
| modern engineering is launching an electron to-do list app that
| uses 2gb of ram.
| aix1 wrote:
| What I'm seeing more and more of is junior folks blindly
| taking LLM-generated code and including it into their
| systems, without even trying to understand it or think
| critically about what it does and where it might break.
|
| Maybe I am living in the past, but it does make me think that
| they might be depriving themselves of an opportunity to
| develop key skills.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >without even trying to understand it or think critically
| about what it does and where it might break.
|
| You are living in a past, but one much farther back than
| you expect.
|
| People were copying code from SO since it became popular.
|
| People are including node modules blindly before AI.
|
| Most developers suck, terribly. Maybe being on HN is a type
| of filter that shows you're just a little bit better than
| the average, but the number of developers on HN is small
| versus the total number of developers.
|
| Edit: I was copying code out of magazines to get games
| running without understanding anything about it when I was
| young.
| aix1 wrote:
| First of all, that's a very different sort of thing
| compared to blindly taking reams of code from an LLM. The
| amounts of code in a given SO answer or a magazine
| article are tiny and the code has undergone review of one
| sort or another. Similarly, if I take QR decomposition
| code from Numerical Recipes, that's quite likely to be
| better quality than what I -- or most folks -- can code
| up in a comparable amount of time. It's also an
| opportunity to learn by studying the code and the method.
|
| Secondly, I am not talking about some abstract SWEs in a
| vacuum. This is happening to real people I work with,
| whom I know to be very capable. The lure of switching off
| the brain and just clicking "Accept" to some LLM
| suggestion seems too strong to resist. :(
| pixl97 wrote:
| Really what you're saying is it is an issue of quantity.
|
| > if I take QR decomposition code from Numerical Recipes,
|
| I'm going to assume the vast majority of code written
| does not look anything like this, but is dumb little
| chunks of glue for other important chunks, that are quite
| often imported from other libraries.
|
| As someone that is not a SWE looking from the outside, I
| think there is a disconnect between what a SWE is told
| they are getting paid for and what a SWE is actually
| getting paid for by (many/most) businesses.
|
| You are under the assumption you are getting paid for
| writing code. But for the vast majority of business that
| is just the icky bits getting ground up in the sausage
| factory that nobody wants to know about. Management above
| you only cares about what gets wrapped in casings and is
| ready to sell to the customer (either internal or
| external). They do not care if the product is technically
| good as long as they can sell it. For each individual
| person in the company becoming a better programmer is
| hard to measure and rarely rewarded by the company they
| work for. Turning out tons of lines of code and
| applications that have at least some semblance of working
| is far more likely to get you a pay raise.
| aix1 wrote:
| I think we're talking past each other a little bit.
|
| You're talking in the aggregate and making some good
| points.
|
| I am talking about what concretely I am seeing on the
| ground. It's become a little too easy to churn out junk
| that looks plausible enough to pass the initial sniff
| test but that ultimately results in negative
| productivity. Someone has to go back and not only redo
| the initial work but also deal with all the knock-on
| effects. It's unclear to me that these effects are offset
| by productivity gains elsewhere. This can also result in
| highly problematic incentive structures: the initial
| launch ticks some box, whoever did it gets rewarded and
| then someone else is left to pick up the pieces. Higher
| overall cost to the orgnisation and worse experience for
| the customers than doing it well in the first place.
|
| Not totally clear how to fix this other than by shifting
| towards longer-term incentive structures (which have
| their own drawbacks).
|
| None of this is completely new, but has become 10X easier
| thanks to the current generation of tooling.
|
| This is in addition to my concerns around what this is
| doing to our junior developers' skills.
|
| Maybe the tooling will soon get good enough that nobody
| has to ever write any code except for enjoyment, but it's
| not clear to me that this is the trajectory we're on.
| serial_dev wrote:
| Then they justify it because they vibe-coded a proof of
| concept in Tauri, and it was even worse.
| high_na_euv wrote:
| Which, at least works relibly across all platforms and
| devices unlike desktop frameworks?
|
| People wouldnt use electron is they had good alternative
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| Flutter / Dart? It's compiled ahead of time and doesn't use
| an embedded browser so I'd expect it to be a lot lighter,
| though I haven't measured.
|
| But the general lack of really cross-platform (desktop +
| mobile + maybe web) ecosystems is just as much as sign that
| devs consider multi-gigabyte Electron apps "good enough" as
| the apps themselves.
| pixl97 wrote:
| >at devs consider multi-gigabyte Electron apps "good
| enough" as the apps themselves.
|
| This kind of misses out on a hierarchy of devs here and
| the amount of work to make it happen. Electron took a
| large chunk from a multi-billion dollar endeavor to use
| to make all this work. Electron only worked because
| Chrome was there. Chrome worked because Google already
| had unlimited money from advertising, and getting
| advertising on every device possible was their goal.
|
| Devs might want light apps everywhere, but seemingly none
| are going to dedicate the rest of their life and money to
| make it work.
| quietbritishjim wrote:
| True, not every dev has the power of a multi-billion
| dollar company behind them. But _a few_ do.
|
| My point was, if enough people really considered this a
| big deal then at least one huge tech company might have
| invested in a solution that provides a lighter weight
| solution that's truely multiplatform (desktop and
| mobile).
|
| I don't have much visibility on how decisions are made to
| maintain massive open-source infrastructure projects, and
| no doubt there are significant business case inputs to
| them, but they must be at least partially technical. So,
| as I see it, the lack of such things give insight that
| even developers don't prioritise them.
|
| As I mentioned, Flutter is almost there and maybe its
| lack of uptake on desktop is just enough to show that
| there really isn't demand (though I expect the main
| reason is its use of the Dart programming language, which
| is very nice but quite niche).
| pixl97 wrote:
| >but they must be at least partially technical.
|
| Having sat in many a meeting, partially yes, but these
| things are _massively_ expensive. There is an equation,
| How much would it cost us to write a replacement that
| covers what we need versus how much does it cost us to
| use what exists that isn 't efficient.
|
| And this is where you miss the biggest part of the
| problem. It's the end users that bear the biggest part of
| the costs. Yes, there is an internal cost for their own
| developers, but that is comparatively small to the costs
| of their paychecks.
|
| The next comes to management of the lightweight solution
| over time. If it's owned by a company at the end of the
| day companies are rarely interested in lightweight, they
| are interested in making the most money and quite often
| that means adding more and more features to accomplish
| lock-in.
|
| Open source is more likely to keep a project remaining
| light, but to do that it's quite often by not accepting
| bulky features that would make companies more money. So
| you see where the catch-22 situation starts to arise
| from.
| lynx97 wrote:
| If you are willing to ignore accessibility, your statement
| is right.
| steve1977 wrote:
| Reliable as in "exposes the same bug across all platforms"?
| high_na_euv wrote:
| Whats so unreliable about electron then?
| steve1977 wrote:
| Probably not much about Electron itself, but it seems to
| lead to buggy applications.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| Literally anything is a good alternative to electron. One
| should prioritize the quality of the product, and use of
| electron gives the lowest quality product.
| smt88 wrote:
| VS Code is a fantastic Electron app
| wat10000 wrote:
| Both "works" and "reliably" are doing some really heavy
| lifting there.
| robotburrito wrote:
| Created by an llm using a super computer cluster haha.
| rajayonin wrote:
| Only one Woz? What about Scott?
| knorker wrote:
| The fact that you have to be more specific than "Scott" says a
| lot.
| testfrequency wrote:
| That's more likely just you.
|
| Anyone who knows Apple knows who "Scott" is referring to.
| Scott Forstall.
| LukeShu wrote:
| Heh, I assumed he was referring to "Scott the Woz" Scott
| Wozniak, a vintage-gaming youtuber. I assumed that the GP
| took a more literal attack on "only one 'Woz'", hile you
| took a more symbolic "only one engineer of such quality".
| In the context of Apple, sure "Scott" is Scott Forstall,
| but that's not necessarily the context.
| testfrequency wrote:
| I could be wrong then if that was their reference. I was
| in the mindset of foundational Apple leaders, not other
| Woz's outside the Apple hemisphere.
|
| EDIT: reading this again, now thinking you are right and
| they are just being snarky about the "one Woz in the
| world" existing.
| vasco wrote:
| That's crazy because I assumed they were obviously talking
| about Apple's first CEO.
|
| For "Scott Apple" search string, Google agrees with me and
| the forstall guy is just a secondary mention.
| testfrequency wrote:
| For me he will always be "Scotty". "Scott" at Apple will
| almost always imply Scott Forstall.
| knorker wrote:
| Woz is not just "some guy at apple". He's a force in his
| own right to the point of being bigger than Apple in some
| ways.
|
| "Woz" is googlable. His name doesn't need context. "Larry"
| could be Ellison or Page. "Scott" could be Forstall or
| Adams.
|
| Who played Scott Forstall in the movie?
|
| Anyway, other comments proven it's not just me, too.
| wat10000 wrote:
| My first computer was an Apple IIGS and everything since
| then has been a Mac. "Scott" doesn't bring anyone specific
| to mind for me. Maybe that connection is automatic for
| newcomers who immediately think "iPhone" when they hear
| "Apple."
| testfrequency wrote:
| I had a very long career at Apple. I have also met and
| spent time with Woz on multiple occasions. I have some
| bias here.
|
| Possibly my assumption was incorrectly based more on
| people who actually worked at Apple vs what the normal
| public thinks of when they hear "Scott" and "Woz" in the
| context of Apple.
| wat10000 wrote:
| It would make sense that people on the inside would be a
| lot more aware of him. Forstall was obviously a pretty
| big name in the community but not to the point of getting
| a shorthand name like that. And he was mostly forgotten
| pretty quickly after he left.
| OhMeadhbh wrote:
| There would be no Scott were it not for Woz (or even Avi.)
| egoisticalgoat wrote:
| As someone who never heard Steve Wozniak being called "Woz",
| Scott was the only Woz on my mind.
| samtheDamned wrote:
| Same here hahaha
| qingcharles wrote:
| Coincidentally one of the earliest Apple I prototypes ends its
| auction tomorrow if you have over $500K to spare:
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46605420
| q2dg wrote:
| For me, anyone who is involved in FOSDEM in any way deserves more
| respect (regarding revolutionary things we can learn)
| direwolf20 wrote:
| You can just go to FOSDEM, it's open entry. If you're in
| Brussels this weekend.
| OhMeadhbh wrote:
| I learned some very bad jokes from him.
| OhMeadhbh wrote:
| It's kinda funny... In '89 a friend and I were talking about
| starting a startup like the two Steve's (we didn't know about Ron
| Wayne back then.) We both knew exactly what Woz did, but were a
| bit sketchy on Jobs role in the early days. Don't get me wrong,
| I'm not saying Jobs was a layabout, only that the strengths he
| brought to the table were more abstract.
|
| So I would also say... the kinds of things we learn from Woz are
| concrete and we get immediate feedback if we learned them wrong.
| Tor3 wrote:
| Woz talked about the early days in an interview, and he said
| something like (paraphrasing) "Steve [Jobs] could call
| companies and get free samples for me, and negotiate low prices
| for other stuff, something I simply couldn't do".
|
| It sounds like they complemented each other during the startup.
| And it was Jobs who suggested that they should try running a
| company.
| pixl97 wrote:
| At the end of the day many different types are needed to make
| complex products work. Humans at least are unlikely to be
| able to accomplish all this individually as it requires
| character traits that are in conflict with each other.
|
| With all humans the difficult part is getting all the needed
| traits to make a business/product work without getting ones
| like backstabbing/jealously that cause problems later.
| ndr42 wrote:
| Had to let this here: A TV clip on YouTube of an episode of
| "That's Incredible", featuring Apple co-founder Stephen "Woz"
| Wozniak (aged 38) running through a maze and nearly winning.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PoJexQjoMtk
|
| (found on the blog of Cabel Sasser: https://cabel.com/woz-vs-
| wooz/)
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| _> his post-Apple life has mattered in ways that have nothing to
| do with money or power._
|
| Sounds a bit like Jimmy Carter. His best and most influential
| work came after he left The Oval Office.
| bazoom42 wrote:
| Maybe best, but suerly not most influential.
| ChrisMarshallNY wrote:
| I guess it depends on people's priorities. He won that Nobel
| for some stuff he did in office, but probably more for his
| peacemaking efforts, afterwards.
|
| I think his Habitat for Humanity work was pretty damn
| important.
| Joel_Mckay wrote:
| I find it amusing people still port in WozMon for modern 6502
| trainer hobby machines. =3
| andrewstuart wrote:
| People are crediting Woz here with great things but not going far
| enough.
|
| Woz invented the consumer personal computer.
|
| That is one of the greatest inventions in human history, perhaps
| the greatest.
| BirAdam wrote:
| Well, that's a highly contested claim. There was quite a bit of
| prior art.
| alnwlsn wrote:
| Some might say he gets too much credit. For example this Woz
| quote
|
| "It was the first time in history anyone had typed a character
| on a keyboard and seen it show up on their own computer's
| screen right in front of them."
|
| seems pretty believable, especially if you don't know the names
| Don Lancaster or Jonathan Titus. Woz might not have at the
| time, and indeed Lancaster was not first either.
| NetMageSCW wrote:
| As far as I know, Don never had a computer and the Mark-8
| used LEDs.
| mrexcess wrote:
| >Woz invented the consumer personal computer.
|
| Definitely had a hand in it. If you want to dime out the
| singular technical innovation that Woz contributed that really
| changed everything, IMO it was figuring out how to make the
| Apple II do color on the cheap. That was the real competitive
| differentiator at the time that made personal computers
| attractive to consumers, and cheap enough to contemplate for
| folks without a garage full of electronics equipment.
| Peroni wrote:
| I once approached Woz about potentially speaking at Hacker News
| London, fully expecting my email to be completely ignored. A few
| days later, he actually responded enthusiastically and mentioned
| an upcoming trip to the UK. He loved the grassroots nature of the
| meetup and was really up for giving a talk (for free!) to the
| community. I then had multiple delightful interactions with his
| wife who managed his logistics.
|
| Devastatingly he fell ill just before his trip and had to
| withdraw. Fortunately we hadn't announced anything however I
| still mourn over the missed opportunity to be able to introduce
| this living legend to our audience!
| simonh wrote:
| I didn't know there is a HN meetup in LDN. How do I join up?
| Peroni wrote:
| Unfortunately we shut it down when COVID hit. I think there's
| a smaller, less formal HN meetup still happening occasionally
| but I'm not affiliated with it.
| randycupertino wrote:
| I sat next to him in business class on a flight back from
| Poland to the SF a few years ago and he was so gracious,
| talking with and taking photos with all his seatmates. I just
| wanted to sleep because I was coming back from a conference and
| I was actually annoyed with all the "fanfare" around him which
| was loud and kept everyone up! It must have been hard for him
| to constantly deal with. He was super nice though and made time
| for everyone who wanted to chat with him.
|
| My other airline celebrity encounter was Pauly Shore, who I was
| standing next to at the baggage carosel and thought to myself,
| "huh this guy sounds just like Pauly Shore" and lo - it was the
| man (and his entourage) himself. I always thought the voice was
| an affectation but nope he actually does talk like that. Woz
| was definitely more exciting to encouter!
| calmbonsai wrote:
| I once had sushi (at a group table) with the man at a JavaOne.
|
| They say "don't meet your heroes", but he was exactly as
| gracious, humble, funny, and knowledgeable as you would expect.
|
| This was just after the first "Embedded Java" specs came out
| and we all had grand fun recognizing the over-engineering and
| dead-on-arrival of that architecture.
| mocmoc wrote:
| Woz is the man
| yodsanklai wrote:
| he's also not afraid to speak out
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ck-f3qZVcWM
| m-s-y wrote:
| That "but" needs to be an "and".
| tofuahdude wrote:
| My dad was Woz's RA in the Berkeley dorms. He often tells this
| story:
|
| One night, dad was on duty, probably smoking pot with his student
| residents.
|
| The phones all stop working.
|
| So dad goes down to the maintenance closet, opens it up... and
| sure enough, there's Woz digging around the building's phone
| wiring. Woz immediately says "I'll fix it, I'll fix it!!".
|
| He was down there installing one of those phreaking devices for
| free long-distance phone calls for everyone in the dorms.
|
| My dad let him do his thing.
| ece wrote:
| I saw him at a meetup in the south bay years ago. Definitely kind
| spoken and generous in answering questions. It was a highlight
| for me after moving to the bay area.
| gtoubassi wrote:
| Hackers by Steven Levy is an incredible story of the industry's
| early years (60-80's) and the characters that were in it for the
| "love of the game" vs what is more common now ("status and
| money"). A lot of heroes like woz, but who are less well known in
| this day and age (Gosper and Greenblatt!). If you are familiar
| with and a fan of Dealers of Lightning or Dream Machine, check
| out Hackers! (this is not a paid endorsement).
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