The longer I live, the more often I learn that so called self-made geniuses like Bill Gates didn’t even do the thing they’re known for, and none of them did any of it alone.
Bill Gates at least can code. His contributions to Microsoft were mostly being a cutthroat businessman, but he can code, and did, in particular the MS Basic runtime. It’s all fuzzy but I’d put him at that stage where you can code, but look at your colleagues and realise that you probably shouldn’t. The not so fabled 1x developer. Not entirely rarely well-suited both as manager and QA because they understand enough to be helpful but, ego permitting, seeing they have no talent, don’t get their creative instincts tied up with actually writing code.
Steve Jobs main claim was that visual design and walling people into marriage of software + hardware as a package was important. And based on the loyalty, profits, he seemed to have focused on the right thing.
As quick as Apple could, they went away from the kit Apple I into expensive unique-looking systems. The Lisa being US$9,995 (equivalent to well over $30,000 in 2023)… NeXT was pretty much the same high-end vision.
Bill Gates bailing out Apple so there could be two main companies like Pepsi and Coke, I really don’t get why people don’t criticize that. Microsoft was ahead in the Smartphone area long before the iPhone, if they had not bailed out Apple…
Bill Gates bailing out Apple so there could be two main companies like Pepsi and Coke, I really don’t get why people don’t criticize that.
Because in the late 90’s, the DoJ was going after Microsoft for anti-trust issues. Had Apple closed up, Microsoft would have been a monopoly with pre-existing anti-trust concerns, and there’s no way in hell that Microsoft wouldn’t have gotten split up.
A lof of the complaints that people had about Microsoft software - like how there wasn’t anything comparable to the iLife suite - came down to MS execs being unwilling to greenlight for fear of the DoJ splitting MS up. That’s why the Zune software was different from Windows Media Player, Photos wouldn’t backup to SkyDrive by default, and tons more that I can’t remember from 15 years ago.
Elon Musk can also code - but I don’t know if he was actually any good. But supposedly he was quite fast and hardworking back when he worked on Zip2 (and perhaps also PayPal). But it was very likely spaghetti code.
The longer I live, the more often I learn that so called self-made geniuses like Bill Gates didn’t even do the thing they’re known for, and none of them did any of it alone.
Bill Gates at least can code. His contributions to Microsoft were mostly being a cutthroat businessman, but he can code, and did, in particular the MS Basic runtime. It’s all fuzzy but I’d put him at that stage where you can code, but look at your colleagues and realise that you probably shouldn’t. The not so fabled 1x developer. Not entirely rarely well-suited both as manager and QA because they understand enough to be helpful but, ego permitting, seeing they have no talent, don’t get their creative instincts tied up with actually writing code.
Steve Jobs, OTOH…
Bill Gates main contribution was having is mommy get him a deal to provide an OS to IBM.
Gates didn’t have an OS, so he bought DOS from another company and repackaged it as his own to licensed it to IBM.
Steve Jobs main claim was that visual design and walling people into marriage of software + hardware as a package was important. And based on the loyalty, profits, he seemed to have focused on the right thing.
As quick as Apple could, they went away from the kit Apple I into expensive unique-looking systems. The Lisa being US$9,995 (equivalent to well over $30,000 in 2023)… NeXT was pretty much the same high-end vision.
Bill Gates bailing out Apple so there could be two main companies like Pepsi and Coke, I really don’t get why people don’t criticize that. Microsoft was ahead in the Smartphone area long before the iPhone, if they had not bailed out Apple…
If Microsoft hadn’t bailed out Apple, your phone would still feature a start menu.
You mean the app drawer?
Because in the late 90’s, the DoJ was going after Microsoft for anti-trust issues. Had Apple closed up, Microsoft would have been a monopoly with pre-existing anti-trust concerns, and there’s no way in hell that Microsoft wouldn’t have gotten split up.
A lof of the complaints that people had about Microsoft software - like how there wasn’t anything comparable to the iLife suite - came down to MS execs being unwilling to greenlight for fear of the DoJ splitting MS up. That’s why the Zune software was different from Windows Media Player, Photos wouldn’t backup to SkyDrive by default, and tons more that I can’t remember from 15 years ago.
Elon Musk can also code - but I don’t know if he was actually any good. But supposedly he was quite fast and hardworking back when he worked on Zip2 (and perhaps also PayPal). But it was very likely spaghetti code.
This applies to pretty much every group, like the Nobel Prize.
I guess Satoru Iwara might be an exception where he just fixed struggling games like Earthbound by himself 😄
Listen to the behind the bastards podcast episode on him. The go into some depth on how there’s really no such thing as a “self made billionaire”.