It's funny, when he describes how he wrote Apple BASIC, it's exactly how a textbook compiler implementation works. His incremental symbol table is just a handwritten DFA. Then his noun stacks and verb stacks are basically how you'd write a parser, though they're usually just generalized into a single stack for a CFG.
Was that the textbook implementation before he did it? I mean, it's been 30 years...
And even if that was the standard design, was there something uniquely impressive about his execution? i.e. different architecture, unusually limited hardware resources, etc. Remember, ideas are a dime a dozen, execution is everything.
And just the fact that he stumbled onto the textbook design without knowing what he was doing, that's somewhat impressive too.
I'm not totally trying to defend Woz -- he has tended to make some exaggerations lately -- I just figure we should be asking the right questions...
Oh, I'm commenting on how it's interesting that he stumbled onto the standard architecture independently, managing to reinvent 15 years or so of theory (at the time) on his own. Not trying to trivialize his accomplishment at all.
I found Wozniak's interview, in Jessica's book, as one of the most entertaining [1]. Many of the lessons learned from his early days have a global appeal to other startups as well: starting out with a great team, being young, not having money, adaptability, etc.
"Entrepreneurs have to keep adjusting to... everything's changing, everything's dynamic, and you get this idea and you get another idea and this doesn't work out and you have to replace it with something else. Time is always critical because somebody might beat you to the punch.
It's better to be young because you can spend a lot more nights, very very late. Because you have to get things done, and there's almost no other way to get around that. When the times come, they are critical." - Woz
