Re:What should a striving non-programmer do?
by nostrademons on Friday August 24, 2007 @11:06PM
(#46495)
"Steve Job's is also a non-programmer - the success of Apple is his vision and the ability to direct people to achieve that goal."
Well, that and Wozniak's 1337 skills at hacking.
The real benefit of having a great hacker cofounder isn't the work they do themselves. It's that they can recognize and attract other great hackers to work for them, and that they're respected enough that those other hackers will give their best effort and not cynically slack off. You think that Jobs could have attracted Burrell Smith and Bud Tribble and Andy Hertzfeld alone if they weren't working with Woz? Or that he could've hired John Lasseter at Pixar without Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray?
Re:What should a striving non-programmer do?
by nailer on Saturday August 25, 2007 @11:52PM
(#46676)
Yes, I believe Jobs certainly would have attracted Andy Hertzfeld without the Woz. Both Jobs and Hertzfeld are passionate user interface designers, with a strong awareness of typography and user experience. The work Jobs have Hertzfeld was in an area Hertzfeld already cared deeply about.
I'm not familiar with the other developers you've mentioned.
digg.com would be the most obvious. Kevin Rose studied CS at college, but it had been a while and he didn't really have the skills to execute his vision quickly and simply. So he paid a developer he'd met through elance 200 buchs to write the first beta of digg. digg is now the most popular social news website.
Outside the world of startups, there's a bunch of established companies that weren't led by programmers.
Microsoft's success is largely based on business acumen - their OS monopoly came from Bill Gates' ability to purchase QDOS and sell it to IBM.
Steve Job's is also a non-programmer - the success of Apple is his vision and the ability to direct people to achieve that goal.