Rest In Peace: Steve Jobs

By now you know, one of America's greatest visionaries has passed away. He will be known as a legacy around here in Silicon Valley. Steve Jobs, you will be sorely missed.

While having lunch just a few blocks away from Apple's Cupertino Headquarters today, I got a message

"Steve Jobs passed away."

Shocked, I looked around. Nobody knew. Then moments later, a woman wept in tears. Next to her, a man put his head in his hands. As people caught wind of the news, the once noisy room of laughter and clanging of utensils against dishes, fell to a dead silence. It was a somber moment in Cupertino.

iSad. A very somber day indeed.

A flashback hit me. One of Mr. Jobs on stage at a San Francisco MacWorld event. The crowd buzzing moments before the man was to appear on stage. Always articulate. Always to the point. And very, very hard driven to get his point across, regardless of what hurdles may lie along the way.

That is how I will remember Steve Jobs.

Silicon Valley Hall of Fame

A few weeks ago, Apple became the highest market capitalized company in the United States at $350 billion dollars, surpassing long time oil behemoth, Exxon Mobile. To think, that a company started in a small garage with two college drop outs to rise to be the biggest corporation in America is astonishing.

When we look back here in Silicon Valley of whom were the great visionaries that drove this valley's fortune and fame, Steve Jobs will be on top on the list.

• Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak - Apple co-founders
• Bill Hewlett and Dave Packard - Hewlett Packard co-Founders
• William Shockley - Shockley Semiconductor, inventor of the semiconductor
• Robert Noyce and Gordon Moore - Intel co-Founders
• Bill Kleiner and James Perkins - Kleiner and Perkins VC
• Timothy Draper - Draper Fisher VC
• Paul J. Friedl - Father of the first personal computer
• Jack Goldman and George Pake, Xerox Palo Alto Research Center founders
• Bill Joy, Andy Bechtolsheim, Scott McNealy, Vinod Khoshia - Sun Microsystems
• Larry Ellison - Oracle founder
• Gene Amdahl - Amdahl Corporation founder
• Alexander Matthew Poniatoff - Ampex founder
• Nolan Bushnell - Atari founder
• Russell and Sigard Varian - Varian Associates founders
• Jerry Sanders - Advanced Micro Devices founder

And that is quite a company to keep.

Thank You, Steve Jobs

Back in the 1970's my parents would buy my sister and I an Apple II. Although sis played on it for the games, I tinkered, exploring with Apple Basic and learning what made it tick. A day wouldn't pass by when I ask the folks to take me over to the local Apple dealer to find new software to run and grab all the Apple magazines I could to read and type in the Apple Basic code to make it do marvelous things.

If it wasn't for the Apple II computer, I wouldn't have ever chosen the career path I did as a young lad. It was that education, that left me with pursuing a software engineering career and chasing dreams.

With that, I leave a farewell in old Apple Basic.

100 for x = 1 to 1000
110  print "Rest In Peace, Steve Jobs".
120 next x
130 print "And Thank You."

About Kerry Kobashi

Kerry is the founder of KerryOnWorld. He lives in Silicon Valley and has worked as an engineer and project manager. He owns Kobashi Computing a consulting company.