Wozniak is a genius who has made indelible contributions to Apple and the Internet as a whole, but it is a shame that he is still unknown today.

I learned about the co-founder of Apple when I read the Biography of Steve Jobs. Now reading the Biography of Wozniak, I realized that this programmer was not only a great person who designed great personal computers like the APPLE I and The APPLE II, but also a very interesting person. His story might be something every programmer should learn from.

Woz was born into a lucky family. His father worked on missile projects and was an electronics enthusiast. Probably influenced by his father as a child, Woz also liked electronics.

Enlightenment education

His father’s education is not memorizing knowledge, but gradually guiding him to understand the context of electronic flow, explaining abstract electronic knowledge in a simple way, fully enough for a six – or seven-year-old child to understand.

Such a first teacher is hard to come by. Since the teacher already knows this knowledge, it will be difficult for him to understand it from a beginner’s point of view. This is why books and tutorials in the world are mostly top-down, they only impart knowledge, but ignore the source of knowledge and internal logic.

Still, there are some textbooks that are easy to understand. Books like “Coding” and “Through the Computer Fog” teach you how to build a simple computer from an electrical switch, perfect for beginners. Many years ago, the predecessors of the computer is in the trial and summary of this method to make the difference engine, adder, formed the earliest prototype of the computer.

I usually in the study, always will fall into a “non classic do not read” error, before reading a book on douban check, pick the highest score of the one or two to read. This way to find books are good, but not necessarily suitable for their own.

Now I prefer to pick one or two books that are easy to read first, and it doesn’t matter if I get a lower grade. Introductory books should be intellectually stimulating and give the beginner a vague insight into what it is they are learning, rather than bursting with concepts and vague techniques.

And then there’s the opposite. Many authors today try to please their readers by writing in plain language that gives the illusion of simplicity, but is actually devoid of content and logic. The book often forces the concept to be just another common thing in life, listing all the similarities and making you think they are really the same thing at heart. This kind of book can mislead you, make you take a lot of detaches, and is very toxic to beginners.

Learning is always like that. You have to find a way to make yourself happy instead of forcing yourself into a rut all day long. When you feel like you have the general outline, be brave enough to jump out of your comfort zone and read boring classic books. They may not be boring anymore because you’ve grown up and are able to find interesting content in them.

It is not enough to read books to understand abstract and complex things. Woz would always try his hand at something as he learned. In fourth grade, he learned a lot about practical electronics from the “gamer kit” his parents gave him for Christmas. He then used the kit to build an intercom system that connected six homes. The children of six families used this secret communication system to play a number of pranks without telling the adults.

Interest and positive feedback loops

Perhaps inspired by this sense of accomplishment, Wozniak developed a keen interest in electronics. He had been shy and introverted since childhood, and the electronic toys he made could not only make him happy, but also bring him a sense of existence and build his confidence. Without this constant motivation, I wonder if he could have achieved such great things.

Woz earned his ham radio license with his father in the sixth grade, becoming the youngest person ever to do so. It’s a lot of learning to get this license. It’s very difficult. For Christmas that year, he was given a radio transceiver assembly kit. Wozniak said it was these early experiences that gave him the skills he needed to design and build the APPLE I motherboard.

When you have real interest, you should have enough motivation to learn what seems complicated and boring, because you will know in your heart that when you learn it well, you can make more interesting products.

This interest-driven force continued to work, and after he was introduced to computers in the sixth grade, Woz made them the center of his life and devoted so much energy to learning about them.

Not following the crowd

Woz had growing pains in junior high. He found that his classmates stopped playing with him and he became invisible. While he continued to indulge in playful electronics projects, his classmates went out drinking, partying and having fun at masquerade balls.

Woz was annoyed, but he didn’t fit in in the same way. He knew he had always been shy and shy, and he needed to express his presence in his own way. Pranks and jokes were his way of expressing social connections. Woz had always liked to pull pranks, both in obscurity and as a big shot. He designed a number of pranks, including a “time bomb” in junior high. The principal found the fake bomb, threw it on the playground, and called the police. When he was in college, he designed a TV jammer, which he would take out when others were watching TV and induce them to pound the TV.

He has his own understanding of the world. His father told him that he felt that the only credible way to test something was through an experimental test, and that only by that test could it be true. You can’t just read something in a book and hear it from someone else and blindly believe it.

He has his own idea of cleverness. Ward said.

I find that in school, “smart” is often defined as reading the same books, newspapers and magazines as teachers and other students, making the same solutions to various exercises, and conforming to the ideas of others. My ideas are much more independent and radical. In my opinion, only those who can think independently and have the spirit of questioning can be called smart.

This is similar to Musk’s first principles. They believed that everything could be deduced from the most basic theoretical logic, the most basic experimental proof. They do not blindly pursue academic performance, on the contrary, they put all their energy on their interests without affecting the normal academic performance.

Keep practicing professionally

Woz remained very passionate about computers. When he was in college, he designed the “Cream soda Computer” and met Jobs. The golden partnership began, wozniak designing and programming, Jobs selling and negotiating.

One summer, they read in a magazine how phonophones had exploited a loophole in the telephone dialing system to create a “blue box” for dialing for free. They reached out to captain Click, a famous telephone flier, to help them improve the blue Box design. They made their first fortune with this, with a 400% profit margin.

Later, Woz was in charge of designing calculators in HP’s calculator division. He continued to study electronics in his spare time, during which time he designed and built his own ping-pong game, based on atari. And drew a lot of designs for personal computers. In fact, Apple’s design was already done, and they just had to make improvements to it.

It was this kind of professional practice in his spare time that kept Woz on the cutting edge of electronics. When the opportunity arose, he quickly built the Apple GENERATION.

The right business partner

If Woz hadn’t met Jobs, he would still have been a great engineer, but he probably wouldn’t have achieved so much in business. At the time, marketers like Jobs were regarded with disdain in the tech world, so Wozniak’s father objected to jobs getting the same equity as Wozniak. He believed that Wozniak had built Apple and that Jobs had nothing to do with it.

But Woz didn’t think he could have sold a single Apple computer without Jobs. Many great companies have this configuration of founders, one in charge of overall operations and negotiations, and one in charge of product design. Co-founders can avoid strategic errors caused by founders’ personal cognitive biases, but the tacit understanding and coordination between founders is also a huge test, which can be said to be a trade-off between tao and skill.

Apple II was an unprecedented success. Wozniak sold his stock at a low price for the benefit of his employees, and then quit Apple. Jobs was ousted, and Apple entered a difficult period.

After woz left Apple, he held two popular American music festivals and lost a lot of money. Founded Cloud9, which was later acquired. He spent years teaching several young children how to code. Now, Woz was old. He plays down fame and wealth and should enjoy a good old age.

Woz was the ideal engineer, a man whose world was filled with interesting technical problems and who was obsessed with using them to make himself and everyone around him happy. He was indifferent to fame and wealth, but it always accompanied him. He could change the world without even realizing it. There should be more such people in the world, but now there are fewer and fewer.

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