re: Who would you rank as more important in the history of computer development....

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Jobs and Gates were marketeers, almost everything attributed to them was already invented by someone else many years prior.

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It always strikes me as odd that this is seen as a fault when people talk about innovation in tech. First off, there seems to be a desire among some tech folks to paint Jobs and Gates as Wall Street types which is hilarious. But let’s say neither of them ever wrote a single line of code. Does it matter?

Assembly lines had been around for hundreds of years before Henry Ford started building Model T’s. But nobody credits medieval Italian shipyards with revolutionizing auto manufacturing.

Regardless of your feelings about Tesla as a company, I think it’s reasonable to say they are pioneers in the world of electric vehicles. But they didn’t come up with the idea. They didn’t invent batteries, or electric motors, or even the first electric vehicle. Same thing with SpaceX - they didn’t invent rocket propulsion.

My point is that in order for there to be a technological revolution, sure - you need inventors. But it’s equally (or arguably more) important to have visionaries that see the big picture, put the pieces together, and know how to bring the product to market. For all of the contributions open-source developers have made over the years, there’s a reason that mainstream America isn’t running Ubuntu on their desktops.

I'd compare both Gates and Jobs with Ray Kroc, "founder" of McDonald's, who spawned the fast food restaurant business.

Charles Babbage...


That genius started it all.