Letter from Steve Wozniak to a high school student in Korea

Woz is such a generous, stand-up soul that he should be famous for that alone, even if he were just a mediocre engineer. The fact that he was also one of the greatest hackers in his time is just a bizarre, but welcome anomaly of tech history.

<i>You are recognized by your own skills and good work, and you don‘t have to criticize others for not doing good work. Just worry about your own skills.</i><p>Wozniak is a very technically brilliant guy, and I have the utmost level of respect for him. But the sentence I quoted above just shows that he's also a stereotypical "nerd" in a lot of ways [1], in the sense that he has a very poor understanding of how humans operate, both at the individual level and the organizational level.<p>Specifically, just worrying about your own skills is not enough most of the time, especially if you work in any kind of team setting where success requires every team member to pull their own weight. If someone is fucking up constantly and ruining your team's objectives and deliverables, you need to let them know. You can be nice about it if you want, but if you actually care about your work then you absolutely cannot "just worry about your own skills."<p>Heck, this isn't true for just companies. I think every one of us has had group assignments in college where one person just didn't do the work or did it incorrectly. Someone like Woz might have let it go, because people who are taught by their parents to be "nice" tend to avoid confrontation due to the unpleasant feelings it brings. But the right thing to do - both morally and otherwise - is to criticize the person for slacking off and file a formal complaint if they don't start performing.<p>In fact, now that I think about it, that's probably why he didn't call out Jobs on it when he found out that Jobs screwed him out of $5,000 back in the day. He just didn't have the confidence to fight wrongdoings, even when he was directly hurt by them (granted, Jobs was Woz's polar opposite in the sense that he had an extremely strong personality, one that would have crushed Woz's). Also remember that when he built the first Apple computer, he wanted to give it away for free because he was just a nice guy. It was Jobs who was a lot more grounded in reality and convinced Woz that they needed to sell it for money.<p>[1]I put it in quotes because I'm not using it as a pejorative.

JL posted her interview of Woz on the Founders at Work website. It's one of my favorites in the book (need to buy another copy, gave away my last one) because you really get a sense of the pure hacker/engineering genius/engineering spirit Woz is.<p>The floppy drive story is priceless.<p><a href="http://www.foundersatwork.com/steve-wozniak.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.foundersatwork.com/steve-wozniak.html</a>

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, Woz is the catalyst that pushed me into programming, and that is something I'm perpetually thankful for.<p>I should write him a note...

<i>"You are recognized by your own skills and good work, and you don‘t have to criticize others for not doing good work. Just worry about your own skills."</i><p>Reading from inspiring people like Wozniak makes me wonder how to adopt such advice.<p>I am wondering about that almost every time I review a pull request. How do you deal with bad code, poor comments or over-engineering when you see it? Of course you can be nice, but then code and product quality would end up affected. How do you balance this thing?? The person being reviewed knows it's not personal, but it too often becomes a battle of egos. I would be really interested to find ways to become a better programmer by being nicer without bending over or compromising on professional integrity. Any suggestions?

Gotta love Woz. So humble, such a brilliant mind, a pure hacker at heart. Need more guys like him and less turds like Mark Pincus (first one that comes to mind).

Love the Woz. A extraordinary combination of quiet genius, generosity and humility.

&#62; ... never want to tell one story in different ways.<p><i>\tangent</i> I know what he's talking about (spinning the truth), so the following is not addressing what he meant, it's just that the bald statement irks me so: when explaining something to somebody, it can be very helpful to express it in familiar terms and concepts that they already understand. You might need to customise the story for each person, and the change might be much more than just a few words, but premised on entirely different concepts.<p>It's more like: you have a map and you know their intended destination. It's not helpful to just tell them where they should be; nor even to just explain one way to get there (one story). Better to find out <i>where they are</i>, and then give them directions in terms of that. (from my stint as an ugrad tutor/demonstrator).

Loved every word of that, great guy!<p>"The best things I did in my young years leading up to the early Apple computers were done because I had little money and had to think deeply to achieve the impossible."<p>On a side note, I think this is why more (and arguably better) hackers come out of Eastern Europe/Asia.

I'm living in Korea right now and I'm fascinated as to how and why Woz decided to reply to this Korean high school student's email, of all the emails he could've replied to, and how often he does this for people. So random but so awesome.<p>And what an amazing and thoughtful reply it was, especially considering how lately Woz has become known more for being a loose cannon criticizing Apple in the press, than for his (amazing) previous accomplishments. Not to mention his portrayal in Steve Jobs' biography was less than glowing.

I think my favorite part of every Woz letter and email is how he signs his name upside down. There's not much more endearing than the playfulness and wonder that somehow conveys.

Noticed the signature at the end, the sign of one of the greatest hackers of our times.<p>Kudos sir.

I'm impressed by how well the response was written. Every sentence seemed to be written in a very unambiguous way. The phrasing may have been awkward, but was very appropriate for a Korean audience.

<i>I didn't know anything about computer languages except—a friend of mine had gone to MIT and, while he was there, he would Xerox pages out of books that were good topics, and he had sent me a lot of pages back from compiler design books.</i><p>I wonder if MIT knew about students sharing information with the outside world 40 years ago. If this copyright violation would have not happened, we'd be in a world without Apple computer, or at least Apple BASIC.

<i>Computer apps are not to be judged by what they do or how well they do it. Rather, it is more important that they feel natural to normal humans and they are led to the right actions.</i><p>This statement makes me sad... but I cannot articulate exactly why.<p>Edit: I like the essay in general. It's very motivating. It would have been great advice when in highschool.

&#62; The teller doesn’t feel that the truth about how they are and how they act is not good<p>...did the transcriber double negate this by mistake or is my head spinning the wrong way?

Is the upside down signature in the original?

Is there a better modern sage than Woz?