6 ms·

All these companies were a lot smarter than us. What we had was luck (1984)

84 points by janandonly 6y ago

disgruntledphd2 6y ago
I adore that apparently Steve Jobs and Wozniak wrote Breakout while they were at Atari. I absolutely adored that game as a child. As an aside, this article was wonderful and if you haven't already done so, you should read it right now. (I especially liked the why you should get a computer argument at the end).
- pstuart 6y ago
  Plenty of good stories here too: https://www.folklore.org/ https://www.folklore.org/
- lonelygirl15a 6y ago
  Well, Woz wired it. There was no software, right?
  - greenyoda 6y ago
    Right, it was TTL logic - no microprocessor (too expensive at the time), no software. Also, Woz's design wasn't the one that was ultimately used: > Atari was unable to use Wozniak's design. By designing the board with as few chips as possible, he made the design difficult to manufacture; it was too compact and complicated to be feasible with Atari's manufacturing methods. However, Wozniak claims Atari could not understand the design, and speculates "maybe some engineer there was trying to make some kind of modification to it." Atari ended up designing their own version for production, which contained about 100 TTL chips. Wozniak found the gameplay to be the same as his original creation, and could not find any differences. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_(video_game)#History_and_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_(video_game)#History_...
    - prox 6y ago
      Whatever happened to that computer club, does it still exist, the Homebrew Computer Club?
      - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
        Now it's called Hacker News. Well - kind of. At least a little.
        oblio 6y ago
        HN, half Homebrew Computer Club, half "get rich quick" schemes, half California housing law discussions.
MaysonL 6y ago
A few months ago I heard about the concept "return on luck". It seems to me that Apple had the highest return on the luck they had of any of their contemporaries, with the possible exception of Microsoft.
- petra 6y ago
  Microsoft's luck was that IBM gave them the license to make the OS, because they thought the money is in the hardware. That's one of the biggest business mistakes ever.So that's a huge amount of luck. So I'm not sure Microsoft is so unique with regards to "return on luck".
  - koolba 6y ago
    That wasn’t luck. That was Bill Gates being his genius self.
    - Hydraulix989 6y ago
      And his parents were lawyers, so he was somewhat familiar with the fact that powerful enough people could use the courts to prevent ordinary folks from "illegally" copying software media (tapes, floppies, punch cards, etc.).
    - kalleboo 6y ago
      The luck was in Gary Kildall missing out on the contract
    - palJl 6y ago
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates "In 1980, she discussed her son's company with John Opel, a fellow committee member, and the chairman of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). Opel, by some accounts, mentioned Mrs. Gates to other IBM executives. A few weeks later, IBM took a chance by hiring Microsoft, then a small software firm, to develop an operating system for its first personal computer."
everybodyknows 6y ago
When did Wozniak write this? Don't see a date.
- shadowprofile77 6y ago
  Next to the post it says 1894, which is decidedly, uh, odd, if Wozniak wrote it.
  - labster 6y ago
    I’m disappointed it wasn’t about Gilded Age business, written by a robber baron or something.
    - schemy 6y ago
      I was expecting something about Morse code. I too was disappointed.
  - wging 6y ago
    My guess would be 1984, since it's a transposition away from what was printed and there's also a link back to a table of contents that says 1984.
  - scollet 6y ago
    Apple was ahead of its time.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
fendy3002 6y ago
Luck (as a factor to make someone / something successful) is too underrated.
- apple4ever 6y ago
  Yup! When you ask how someone became a manager (especially if they are bad), a lot of it was luck. I'm not discounting that the worked hard to earn it, but a lot of people work hard but are unlucky. I count myself in the unlucky pile.
- credit_guy 6y ago
  Stated like this this assertion is unprovable and unfalsifiable. Another person could state that luck is too overrated, who is right, who is wrong, and how do you decide? In a controlled setup though, like backgammon or poker, luck is definitely overrated. Just try to play a single game of backgammon with a professional player, and see if you stand a chance. You can play 100 games, and without fail you would lose all of them. So, how can a professional player of a game of chance consistently win? By maximizing the win when they get a lucky roll, and minimizing the loss when they get an unlucky one. In the long run the number of lucky rolls is roughly equal with the number of unlucky rolls, but they will manage to get a positive expected value. Maybe real life is similar to a game of chance. Maybe not? I don't know for sure. But my hunch is this: both Mark Zuckerberg and I were faced with a long string of random events in our life. Many, many, many. After each such event, we both had a number of ways to respond. Somehow Zuckerberg got richer pretty much every day of his adult life, and he now sits at #3 at the top of the world. I, on the other hand, made whatever choices I made and sit currently at #1e9 or #2e9 (not sure). I can think that Zuckerberg has been dealt a luckier hand in life, or I can think he was much better at playing what he was dealt than me. Nobody will ever know for sure. But my personal belief is that he was a more skillful player than me.
  - Hercuros 6y ago
    To be fair, you don't hear (as much) about all the Mark Zuckerbergs who weren't quite so successful. If you're going to look at some of the richest people on the planet, then of course you'll see a string of successes, because without a long string of successes they wouldn't have been the richest people on the planet. I also think that as the string of successes becomes longer (or you become richer), you have more of a chance at further successes as well. Looking at the most successful people in any situation is not a good way to get a sense of the underlying probabilities involved. If you let 1000 people flip coins 1000 times and count the number of heads, you'll see an extraordinarily high number of heads among the most successful people. The mere fact that there are really few people as rich as Zuckerberg indicates a big luck / network effect factor in my opinion. Zuckerberg is probably more skilled than the average person, but there are many more people like him in terms of skills (I believe), and the vast majority of them didn't get anywhere near as rich. Zuckerberg also didn't accumulate his wealth by lots of small repeated increments: he won big by Facebook becoming successful (and there was no guarantee of that, despite Zuckerberg's skills). Without that big win, I doubt that Zuckerberg would have ended up anywhere near #3.
api 6y ago
> We were finally going to get control of our own computers. It wasn't a million-dollar thing that belonged to the company you worked for. Too bad it's gone full circle. The cloud is the new mainframe.

84 points by janandonly 6y ago

I adore that apparently Steve Jobs and Wozniak wrote Breakout while they were at Atari. I absolutely adored that game as a child. As an aside, this article was wonderful and if you haven't already done so, you should read it right now. (I especially liked the why you should get a computer argument at the end).

pstuart 6y ago
Plenty of good stories here too: https://www.folklore.org/ https://www.folklore.org/
lonelygirl15a 6y ago
Well, Woz wired it. There was no software, right?
- greenyoda 6y ago
  Right, it was TTL logic - no microprocessor (too expensive at the time), no software. Also, Woz's design wasn't the one that was ultimately used: > Atari was unable to use Wozniak's design. By designing the board with as few chips as possible, he made the design difficult to manufacture; it was too compact and complicated to be feasible with Atari's manufacturing methods. However, Wozniak claims Atari could not understand the design, and speculates "maybe some engineer there was trying to make some kind of modification to it." Atari ended up designing their own version for production, which contained about 100 TTL chips. Wozniak found the gameplay to be the same as his original creation, and could not find any differences. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_(video_game)#History_and_development https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Breakout_(video_game)#History_...
  - prox 6y ago
    Whatever happened to that computer club, does it still exist, the Homebrew Computer Club?
    - TheOtherHobbes 6y ago
      Now it's called Hacker News. Well - kind of. At least a little.
      - oblio 6y ago
        HN, half Homebrew Computer Club, half "get rich quick" schemes, half California housing law discussions.

MaysonL 6y ago

A few months ago I heard about the concept "return on luck". It seems to me that Apple had the highest return on the luck they had of any of their contemporaries, with the possible exception of Microsoft.

petra 6y ago
Microsoft's luck was that IBM gave them the license to make the OS, because they thought the money is in the hardware. That's one of the biggest business mistakes ever.So that's a huge amount of luck. So I'm not sure Microsoft is so unique with regards to "return on luck".
- koolba 6y ago
  That wasn’t luck. That was Bill Gates being his genius self.
  - Hydraulix989 6y ago
    And his parents were lawyers, so he was somewhat familiar with the fact that powerful enough people could use the courts to prevent ordinary folks from "illegally" copying software media (tapes, floppies, punch cards, etc.).
  - kalleboo 6y ago
    The luck was in Gary Kildall missing out on the contract
  - palJl 6y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mary_Maxwell_Gates "In 1980, she discussed her son's company with John Opel, a fellow committee member, and the chairman of International Business Machines Corporation (IBM). Opel, by some accounts, mentioned Mrs. Gates to other IBM executives. A few weeks later, IBM took a chance by hiring Microsoft, then a small software firm, to develop an operating system for its first personal computer."

everybodyknows 6y ago

When did Wozniak write this? Don't see a date.

shadowprofile77 6y ago
Next to the post it says 1894, which is decidedly, uh, odd, if Wozniak wrote it.
- labster 6y ago
  I’m disappointed it wasn’t about Gilded Age business, written by a robber baron or something.
  - schemy 6y ago
    I was expecting something about Morse code. I too was disappointed.
- wging 6y ago
  My guess would be 1984, since it's a transposition away from what was printed and there's also a link back to a table of contents that says 1984.
- scollet 6y ago
  Apple was ahead of its time.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

deleted 6y ago
[deleted]

fendy3002 6y ago

Luck (as a factor to make someone / something successful) is too underrated.

apple4ever 6y ago
Yup! When you ask how someone became a manager (especially if they are bad), a lot of it was luck. I'm not discounting that the worked hard to earn it, but a lot of people work hard but are unlucky. I count myself in the unlucky pile.
credit_guy 6y ago
Stated like this this assertion is unprovable and unfalsifiable. Another person could state that luck is too overrated, who is right, who is wrong, and how do you decide? In a controlled setup though, like backgammon or poker, luck is definitely overrated. Just try to play a single game of backgammon with a professional player, and see if you stand a chance. You can play 100 games, and without fail you would lose all of them. So, how can a professional player of a game of chance consistently win? By maximizing the win when they get a lucky roll, and minimizing the loss when they get an unlucky one. In the long run the number of lucky rolls is roughly equal with the number of unlucky rolls, but they will manage to get a positive expected value. Maybe real life is similar to a game of chance. Maybe not? I don't know for sure. But my hunch is this: both Mark Zuckerberg and I were faced with a long string of random events in our life. Many, many, many. After each such event, we both had a number of ways to respond. Somehow Zuckerberg got richer pretty much every day of his adult life, and he now sits at #3 at the top of the world. I, on the other hand, made whatever choices I made and sit currently at #1e9 or #2e9 (not sure). I can think that Zuckerberg has been dealt a luckier hand in life, or I can think he was much better at playing what he was dealt than me. Nobody will ever know for sure. But my personal belief is that he was a more skillful player than me.
- Hercuros 6y ago
  To be fair, you don't hear (as much) about all the Mark Zuckerbergs who weren't quite so successful. If you're going to look at some of the richest people on the planet, then of course you'll see a string of successes, because without a long string of successes they wouldn't have been the richest people on the planet. I also think that as the string of successes becomes longer (or you become richer), you have more of a chance at further successes as well. Looking at the most successful people in any situation is not a good way to get a sense of the underlying probabilities involved. If you let 1000 people flip coins 1000 times and count the number of heads, you'll see an extraordinarily high number of heads among the most successful people. The mere fact that there are really few people as rich as Zuckerberg indicates a big luck / network effect factor in my opinion. Zuckerberg is probably more skilled than the average person, but there are many more people like him in terms of skills (I believe), and the vast majority of them didn't get anywhere near as rich. Zuckerberg also didn't accumulate his wealth by lots of small repeated increments: he won big by Facebook becoming successful (and there was no guarantee of that, despite Zuckerberg's skills). Without that big win, I doubt that Zuckerberg would have ended up anywhere near #3.

api 6y ago

> We were finally going to get control of our own computers. It wasn't a million-dollar thing that belonged to the company you worked for. Too bad it's gone full circle. The cloud is the new mainframe.