Steve Jobs, NeXTSTEP, and early object-oriented programming (2016)

Why do the words "Steve Jobs" and "programming" in the same sentence very slightly rub me the wrong way. Probably because one thing he wasn't, amongst all the superhuman things attributed to him by Apple zealots, is a programmer.

Elon Musk doesn't build rockets either - but it's fair to associate him with SpaceX progress. We rightly blame the top guy when stuff goes pear shaped, and we should be willing to let them get some credit when it goes well.

He actually did know how to code. He and Woz created the classic video game Breakout while working at Atari. (I have no doubt Woz did most of the heavy lifting.) It's not that he didn't know how to program, it's just that coding was not his strong suit.

Steve Jobs was first a computer hobbyist, then later he worked at Atari before he co-founded Apple in 1976. He wasn’t a non-technical founder, although he was certainly less technical than his co-founder. He could program, he could do digital design, he knew his way around a bread board and an oscilloscope.

He isn’t famous for being a programmer, but he could do it, and he certainly understood it.

> He actually did know how to code. He and Woz created the classic video game Breakout while working at Atari. (I have no doubt Woz did most of the heavy lifting.

And Jobs kept most of the money ($4,750), gave Woz $350 and went off to India to achieve enlightenment.

NeXTstep was all about revolutionizing the programming experience. For the time, it was dramatically more powerful and far easier than the completion. We are basically still using that app environment today ( on macOS and iOS ).

The teams he assembled and worked with had a crazy impact on programmers, software development, computer platforms and end users. Even when he way not a developer himself, he looked for very bright people in software development to make it possible to develop new computer platforms. Home computers, early graphical workstations, desktop publishing, UNIX workstation for students, next generation operating systems for personal computers, ...

Note that creating an arcade game at that time wasn't writing a computer program, it was designing a finite state machine out of discrete logic chips.