Does Steve Jobs know how to code?

January 3, 2018

Question from E-mail

I’m a comp sci major (unfortunately not engineering) and a child development minor, so I am a really big fan of everything that you’ve been doing and am interested in doing similar things some day. I have a few questions that I would love to hear your responses to: – Does Steve Jobs know how to code? Is he an engineer (i.e. did he know what the heck you were doing when you were building the Apple?)

Woz

Steve didn’t ever code. He wasn’t an engineer and he didn’t do any original design, but he was technical enough to alter and change and add to other designs. I did all of the Apple I and Apple ][ myself, including the feature choices. I did all of the BASIC myself (it’s in handwriting as I couldn’t afford an assembler). The only person who helped write some of the Apple ][ code was Allen Baum, who helped with the ‘monitor’ program.