The opening statement doesn't bode well for the factual accuracy of what follows. Jobs was not a programmer, and Markkula was an investor, not a co-founder.
> “Everybody should learn to program a computer, because it teaches you how to think"
– Steve Jobs
How come people are surprised Jobs and even Musk code?
We have such a false dichotomy built into our culture where the brilliant engineer types are unable to communicate their ideas with precision, zeal, persuasion, and charisma.
I think it is fair that we distrust only charisma. Many people prey upon this.
Still, I could hold up at least four personal friends and three former coworkers that blow the doors off any such assumptions.
Several have worked through up and around Silicon Valley, but others have found other paths, including bureaucracy.
Is it hard for me to believe that Steve Jobs fits that pattern? Quite the opposite.
Jobs often disagreed with people about what was attainable. Bending the perception of truth is not the same as denying or not caring about truth.
Jobs held core truths, ie testable claims, such as “design matters” and design could differentiate Apple and make it wildly valuable. He was largely correct.
Jobs had a track record of delivering. So his visions often did map on to reality. In this sense, the reality distortion field served as a kind of self-fulfilling prophecy.
Frankfurtian bullshitters, OTOH, don’t care if the truth catches up to them. To them it’s all just words you say for convenience.
disclaimer: ex Apple / like (not love — love is a word best preserved for human relationships) Apple products / strive to be generally skeptical and discontented with everything
He also described that working at Apple and under Jobs as scary. If you didn’t bring your A-game you would be fired rather quickly.
Anyway the book is interesting.
> – Steve Jobs
As a critique, most programming is vastly overrated in terms of what this quote is claiming. I would say mathematics, art, and philosophy actually teach you how to think. It is much easier to program systems that work without thinking than it is to do those three fields in a successful way without thinking. And programming, more than anything, is about communication. Most programming, not all, is very simple logic. Good programming, in my opinion, will indeed capture a domain through some type of domain modeling process, but I highly doubt Jobs was even aware of this way of thinking about programming.
> Armas Clifford (Mike) Markkula Jr., the third and perhaps least understood co-founder of Apple Computer Inc.
(Also, it's funny how 1997 is actually closer to 1977 than it is to our current year of 2023..)
Later, he was sort-of hired as a hardware designer. Same URL:
“Jobs returned to Atari in early 1975, and that summer, Bushnell assigned him to create a circuit board for the arcade video game Breakout in as few chips as possible, knowing that Jobs would recruit Wozniak for help”
Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steve_Jobs#Apple_(1976–1985) says:
Jobs's friend from Reed College and India, Daniel Kottke, recalled that as an early Apple employee, he “was the only person who worked in the garage … Woz would show up once a week with his latest code. Steve Jobs didn't get his hands dirty in that sense.”
Also, there’s Woz’s statement (https://www.businessinsider.com/steve-jobs-never-wrote-compu...):
”Steve didn't ever code," writes Wozniak. "He wasn't an engineer and he didn't do any original design, but he was technical enough to alter and change and add to other designs.”
⇒ I don’t think he did much, if any, programming.