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One of my fav Jobs quotes (not catchy, but practical) is:

"...there needs to be someone who is the keeper and reiterator of the vision..."

If you have your own project/startup, then that's you. Even if you just reiterate it to yourself.

It features in this video that's making the rounds at the moment http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sOlqqriBvUM&feature=youtu...

⬐ technoslut

The one I found most interesting is:

"Learning to program teaches you how to think. Computer science is a liberal art."

It's clear that Jobs had viewed the iPad as being a way to help change education. Though you can't program on the iPad currently, I have no doubt that it will eventually come in the future.

Jobs also shared the same belief as Alan Kay. Kay was angered that Scratch wasn't currently possible under Apple's rules and viewed the Dynabook as a way to teach children how to code. A comment like this shows that Jobs probably had this in his mind but wanted to take baby steps with what he probably viewed as the future of Apple. It could also be that he wanted to get the foundation of iOS correct before moving into something more complicated as programming.

I wonder if Jobs felt the same way in his later years. I'm guessing he did. With traditional blue collar jobs disappearing, computer science is becoming an ever-increasing necessity for the future workforce.

⬐ saint-loup

I'm tempted to generalize this sentence to "Learning (anything) teaches you how to think".

Computing certainly conveys a stronger worldview than, say, skateboarding, but I really think mastering any activity can be a valuable and profound lesson.

⬐ tikhonj

One of the differences between computer science and other fields is that, in a sense, computer science is a meta-field: it's the study of information. You learn how to solve problems from the very foundation, empirically. In that way it's probably akin to philosophy, although I don't know enough philosophy to be sure. Basically, instead of solving problems you're solving the problem of how to solve problems.

This is what makes computer science, along with a few similar fields (mathematics comes to mind) very special.

⬐ namank

Its the critical thinking aspect that hasn't been traditionally seen in any discipline except engineering.

⬐ WalterBright

The thing about computer programming is it is unforgiving - your program works or it doesn't. You cannot talk it, fool it, force it, etc., into working. Learning programming forces a certain reality check into your learning that is absent from many other disciplines.

⬐ dhugiaskmak

I think it's less about the unforgiving nature of programming and much more about the immediate and (usually) precise feedback that you get when you fail that makes it so good at teaching you how to think. I wish every skill I wanted to learn came with a compiler and a debugger.

⬐ coob

> Though you can't program on the iPad currently

Ah but you can:

http://twolivesleft.com/Codea/

⬐ staktrace

You should read his biography (by Walter Isaacson). The intersection between arts and technology was a huge point of focus with Jobs.

⬐ tensor

I suppose everybody interprets this comment differently. My reading of it is one of extreme ignorance of what computer science is. Computer science is part applied math, and part pure math. It is most certainly not in any way a liberal art.

Further, it is crucial to most of Jobs own technologies in a very deep way. Indeed it is crucial to all of computing. Learning to program teaches you to think, but doing math and applying math does not? This is not a comment to be proud of.

Every applied science crucially depends on mathematics in some form. Thus, I take this as ignorance on Jobs part. It fits right in line with Jobs feeling justified in taking the entire credit for technologies that he mostly copied from academia. Yes, he and Apple modified some of them, especially the early GUI days. But more recently they lifted others like Siri verbatim. But Jobs has never acknowledge the huge shoulders he stood on.

In my opinion, Jobs' primary skill was art. Not technical innovation, not science. One could argue he recognized good engineering I suppose, but software architecture is also arguably more art than science in that there are few objective measures of it that people agree on.

⬐ SatvikBeri

Be careful of decontextualized quotes. "Computer Science is a liberal art" could be interpreted a lot of ways, so here's some context:

"In my perspective ... science and computer science is a liberal art, it's something everyone should know how to use, at least, and harness in their life. It's not something that should be relegated to 5 percent of the population over in the corner. It's something that everybody should be exposed to and everyone should have mastery of to some extent, and that's how we viewed computation and these computation devices."

So it seems like he meant "liberal art" in the sense of "subjects that are essential for everyone" (the original definition of liberal art) as opposed to "subjects that don't use math."

Source: http://www.npr.org/2011/10/06/141115121/steve-jobs-computer-...