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by hga 5862 days ago
To the extent I've studied this, which has very little to do with Woz, he doesn't pass my threshold of "techie".

Your mileage will vary and my information is woefully incomplete, but on the other hand I sure don't think he's in the league of any of the techies I cited, although I'm willing to believe he's significantly more technical than Thomas Watson, Jr. was and perhaps a bit more than Larry Ellison is (don't know much about that aspect of the latter).
2 comments
philwelch 5862 days ago
Jobs was an electronics hobbyist at the time he met Woz--in fact, that's how they met. While it's true that Jobs wasn't as talented as Woz, that's the reason he gave it up.
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shadowsun7 5862 days ago
What exactly is your threshold of "techie"?
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hga 5862 days ago
In this context, the beginning would be designing, building and debugging (getting to work) a "serious" digital circuit or piece of software. Woz's analog work, e.g. the critical switching power supply for the Apple, is a bit beyond that.

I'm not sure how to define the threshold for a digital circuit in those days (that's not my field, for one thing, and the Lisp Machine ones I was vaguely familiar with are huge in comparison to a personal computer of that era).

For software, I'm not sure how to define it in words, but "I know it when I see it" ^_^. Certainly more than "a few thousand lines of C code" ... maybe, it depends on the code. More than you're generally required to do to get an EE (sic) degree....

However, for Jobs, as far as I know he hasn't come close to the thresholds in either domain. Famously, he hired Woz to do that block of Atari digital design work, and as for software, I'm not aware of any programs he's written, and there's these tidbits for backup:

Woz: "Steve jobs never programmed in his life." (http://davidweiss.blogspot.com/2006/10/woz-at-microsoft.html)

This one may be folklore but it's just too fun not to include:

"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://www.folklore.org/StoryView.py?project=Macintosh&s...

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