Yeah, Jobs definitely doesn't have an EE degree. His formal education is limited to sitting in on some artsy classes at Reed College, and dropping lots of acid.
Incidentally, I don't think the Woz had any formal EE or CS education either, he was just a complete and utter genius. Looking at what he did today, it's mind boggling. People spend years in college learning about just one of the many things he basically figured out on his spare time.
First, he decided it would be cool to have a computer, but had no idea how to build one. So he looked over some IC spec sheets, pulled out his soldering iron, and built one. He was poor, so he built it using just a few, cheap chips, and yet made it run better than anyone else's 'professionally built' computer. He couldn't afford a fancy output mechanism (flashing lights and switches, or printer) so he built the first modern computer monitor, out of his old Sears TV.
Then he realized it needed software, but didn't know anything about programing. So he tinkered around a bit and produced a version of BASIC, a compiler, an operating system, games, etc etc.
Then Steve Jobs decided the Apple needed a floppy drive. Woz didn't know anything about engineering a floppy drive, or interface, or drivers, but he sat down with a bare drive mechanism and in a week or two had a fully functional floppy disk system, faster and with a fraction of the chips used in commercial systems.
It's almost unreal. The funniest thing is that AFTER all this, now a millionare, he decided to go and get his EE degree I would be terrified to be his prof.
Oh, and even better, after all that, he spent the better part of the next decade teaching in elementary schools.
BTW - going back to the Jobs topic, in the early days of Apple, it Jobs had almost nothing to do with the actual engineering. At most, he was the one who handed Woz the tools, or did mindless stuff like wire wrapping boards.
Rather, Jobs came up with ideas, and told Woz to build them. It was actually a one in a million pair-up. Jobs coming up with brilliant but 'impossible' visions, and Woz being brilliant enough to somehow build them. Without either one of them, the computers we use today might not exist.
Incidentally, I don't think the Woz had any formal EE or CS education either, he was just a complete and utter genius.
<hr></blockquote>
Woz is definitely a genius, but he does have a degree. As you can see in this
<a href="http://www.woz.org/letters/general/33.html"; target="_blank">email reply</a> he graduated from Berkeley in 1987 (a year before me). The big hubaloo was that he was secretly enrolled in the EECS department under a made up name, Rocky Racoon Clark. As I recall he was the commencement speaker for the engineering school's graduation ceremony.
On a related tangent, the speaker at my graduation for the computer science department was Bill Budge, author of a Apple II pinball game (forgot the name) along with many others.
Comments
Incidentally, I don't think the Woz had any formal EE or CS education either, he was just a complete and utter genius. Looking at what he did today, it's mind boggling. People spend years in college learning about just one of the many things he basically figured out on his spare time.
First, he decided it would be cool to have a computer, but had no idea how to build one. So he looked over some IC spec sheets, pulled out his soldering iron, and built one. He was poor, so he built it using just a few, cheap chips, and yet made it run better than anyone else's 'professionally built' computer. He couldn't afford a fancy output mechanism (flashing lights and switches, or printer) so he built the first modern computer monitor, out of his old Sears TV.
Then he realized it needed software, but didn't know anything about programing. So he tinkered around a bit and produced a version of BASIC, a compiler, an operating system, games, etc etc.
Then Steve Jobs decided the Apple needed a floppy drive. Woz didn't know anything about engineering a floppy drive, or interface, or drivers, but he sat down with a bare drive mechanism and in a week or two had a fully functional floppy disk system, faster and with a fraction of the chips used in commercial systems.
It's almost unreal. The funniest thing is that AFTER all this, now a millionare, he decided to go and get his EE degree
Oh, and even better, after all that, he spent the better part of the next decade teaching in elementary schools.
BTW - going back to the Jobs topic, in the early days of Apple, it Jobs had almost nothing to do with the actual engineering. At most, he was the one who handed Woz the tools, or did mindless stuff like wire wrapping boards.
Rather, Jobs came up with ideas, and told Woz to build them. It was actually a one in a million pair-up. Jobs coming up with brilliant but 'impossible' visions, and Woz being brilliant enough to somehow build them. Without either one of them, the computers we use today might not exist.
-robo
[QB]
Incidentally, I don't think the Woz had any formal EE or CS education either, he was just a complete and utter genius.
<hr></blockquote>
Woz is definitely a genius, but he does have a degree. As you can see in this
<a href="http://www.woz.org/letters/general/33.html"; target="_blank">email reply</a> he graduated from Berkeley in 1987 (a year before me). The big hubaloo was that he was secretly enrolled in the EECS department under a made up name, Rocky Racoon Clark. As I recall he was the commencement speaker for the engineering school's graduation ceremony.
On a related tangent, the speaker at my graduation for the computer science department was Bill Budge, author of a Apple II pinball game (forgot the name) along with many others.
Some guy named Dave Chen, a soph CS major at Princeton, just emailed me. My residence is in Bethesda.
Now, this other Dave Chen is not you, but I was somewhat impressed with the timing of it all.
<strong>...author of a Apple II pinball game (forgot the name) along with many others.</strong><hr></blockquote>
breakout, no ?
[ 09-18-2002: Message edited by: Defiant ]</p>
[QB]
Woz is definitely a genius, but he does have a degree. As you can see in this
<a href="http://www.woz.org/letters/general/33.html"; target="_blank">email reply</a> he graduated from Berkeley in 1987 (a year before me). QB]<hr></blockquote>
read my post again. I mentioned that he got his EE degree.. AFTER his Apple days. By 1987, I think even Jobs had left Apple.
-robo