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Being Bill Gates, John Carmack or Steve Jobs is not “doing things slightly differently.”
by Koshkin 7y ago
Being Bill Gates, John Carmack or Steve Jobs is not “doing things slightly differently.”
- WalterBright 7y agoIn the 70's, I worked for a small company that made custom single board computers for various customers. In doing so, we had developed all kinds of software for our own use, like assemblers, linkers, debuggers, etc. All first class stuff. I even designed, built, and programmed video drivers for monitors. We had EVERYTHING needed to build an Apple II. Everything except being able to see what was right in front of our face. One of the other employees (Hal Finney, you might have heard of him) wrote a BASIC interpreter that fit in a 2K PROM. We did nothing with it. Never occurred to us that it was worth anything. So what do I do? I go into the compiler business, which paid well, but had zero prospects of big money :-)
- WalterBright 7y agoJohn Carmack is special. He's a programmer's programmer. He did so much I never could have done. I never think "I coulda written DOOM!" But BASIC, DOS, etc., were fairly straightforward. The magic there was recognizing the opportunity. Maybe I would have failed to execute that properly that as a businessman, who knows, but failing to see the opportunity was where things went into the ditch. Note that Jobs took a while to learn how to run a business. The Apple II made so much money it gave him runway to learn.