Jobs was not "only" a visionary. Before Apple, Jobs worked at Atari as a technician. He would get assigned tasks like designing circuit boards. If you consider the early days, Jobs only looks like a business guy if you stand him next to Woz.
Anyway, I think I can say without exaggeration that I'm better than average in both engineering and design. At least for me, I think you have to be born that way -- you get pleasure both from aesthetics, and from solving problems. And when left alone by a world that sees both as separate, you just do your thing.
I started got a computer when I was 11. Other people played games. It seemed completely natural to me to spend almost all my time programming pretty graphics demos.
But how do you get any better? I think you have to be the kind of person who seeks challenges, who seeks a ladder to climb.
For computing, I think we all know that drill. Open source has made it so that you can start anywhere and go all the way to OS development, if that's what you want. You can also get work (even if you have little experience) and use other people's resources to educate yourself.
For design, it's a bit harder. Perhaps I was lucky in that I continually wavered between science and engineering, and design and journalism.
In my teens and early 20s, I was the production/layout guy at student newspapers. So I could educate myself, with thousands of dollars of other people's money, in a way that was almost ridiculously unsupervised. That sharpened my appreciation for typography, photography, design, etc., as well as gave me some experience managing people, budgets and deadlines. But I guess that other people in that role might not have gone as crazy as I did for the design aspect. Especially for the entertainment sections (where design was allowed to be more fun) I was trying to top myself with every single issue that I did. You know that you're doing it right when (a) the bloody thing actually makes printing deadline, week after week (b) you walk around the university and you see people putting your layouts up as a poster.
Anyway, I think I can say without exaggeration that I'm better than average in both engineering and design. At least for me, I think you have to be born that way -- you get pleasure both from aesthetics, and from solving problems. And when left alone by a world that sees both as separate, you just do your thing.
I started got a computer when I was 11. Other people played games. It seemed completely natural to me to spend almost all my time programming pretty graphics demos.
But how do you get any better? I think you have to be the kind of person who seeks challenges, who seeks a ladder to climb.
For computing, I think we all know that drill. Open source has made it so that you can start anywhere and go all the way to OS development, if that's what you want. You can also get work (even if you have little experience) and use other people's resources to educate yourself.
For design, it's a bit harder. Perhaps I was lucky in that I continually wavered between science and engineering, and design and journalism.
In my teens and early 20s, I was the production/layout guy at student newspapers. So I could educate myself, with thousands of dollars of other people's money, in a way that was almost ridiculously unsupervised. That sharpened my appreciation for typography, photography, design, etc., as well as gave me some experience managing people, budgets and deadlines. But I guess that other people in that role might not have gone as crazy as I did for the design aspect. Especially for the entertainment sections (where design was allowed to be more fun) I was trying to top myself with every single issue that I did. You know that you're doing it right when (a) the bloody thing actually makes printing deadline, week after week (b) you walk around the university and you see people putting your layouts up as a poster.