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26th out of 196 books
—
132 voters
Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age
"The computer world is like an intellectual Wild West, in which you can shoot anyone you wish with your ideas, if you're willing to risk the consequences. " --from Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age, by Paul Graham
We are living in the computer age, in a world increasingly designed and engineered by computer programmers and software designers, by people...more
We are living in the computer age, in a world increasingly designed and engineered by computer programmers and software designers, by people...more
Hardcover, 272 pages
Published
May 25th 2004
by O'Reilly Media
(first published 2004)
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Meh. This started out promising. While it may provide inspirational fodder for young, technological entrepreneurs, everyone else might soon find the tone obnoxious and constant extrapolation tedious.
Graham is at his best when he sticks to what he knows: programming and business technology. As such, the best chapter is "programming languages explained." This chapter held the most accessible explanation on language analytic that I've ever come across, and is a pleasure to read. Other chapters, su...more
Graham is at his best when he sticks to what he knows: programming and business technology. As such, the best chapter is "programming languages explained." This chapter held the most accessible explanation on language analytic that I've ever come across, and is a pleasure to read. Other chapters, su...more
Paul Graham ('pg') is the closest thing Silicon Valley has to a patriarchal, Godfather-like figure. He's revered within the startup tech community both for his online essays and for starting Y Combinator.
Hackers and Painters is essentially an edited collection of essays posted to his online blog. His writings are fantastic: if you consider yourself a hacker, a tinkerer, or any sort of creative type that relies on fiddling with computers to practice your craft, you owe it to yourself to read pg's...more
Hackers and Painters is essentially an edited collection of essays posted to his online blog. His writings are fantastic: if you consider yourself a hacker, a tinkerer, or any sort of creative type that relies on fiddling with computers to practice your craft, you owe it to yourself to read pg's...more
I really enjoy Paul Graham's writings. I think that everything in this book may be available on Graham's blog, but it's still worth checking out. The book is really a series of essays in disguise but frankly that makes it much better than many drawn out books that would have been better as essay. Graham writes in a direct manner that is very engaging. I recommend the following essay in particular:
3) What You Can't Say - In this essay Graham defines a procedure for identifying beliefs that you sh...more
3) What You Can't Say - In this essay Graham defines a procedure for identifying beliefs that you sh...more
I had serious problems with this book. So Paul Graham is a successful Lisp hacker who made a lot of money from his start-up. Good for him. To be sure, this earns him some credibility in discussing languages and start-ups. Unfortunately, he takes it upon himself to extrapolate from this single data point to universal laws of what makes you successful. Moreover, he seems to think that his success as a geek entrepreneur somehow lends validity to whatever unsubstantiated thoughts, feelings and preju...more
Apr 09, 2012
Katherine
rated it
5 of 5 stars
·
review of another edition
Recommends it for:
Emily M, Andrew M, Caitlin, Trevin
I wish I had read this book in college when it came out. I don't agree with everything he puts forth, but Paul Graham has a clear writing style and an internally consistent and logical world view (kind of like when Project Runway contestants have the much lauded by judges' "point of view" but the good kind, not the kind when you think everything is just consistently ugly and over the top...ahem Josh McKinley). He's also brilliant and an original thinker. People mention the "Why Nerds Are Unpopul...more
What I expected going in was interested parallels on the process of creating software versus other creative arts, and what Graham had learned across multiple disciplines. That I can dig.
What I got is a string of thinly justified essays that are lionising The Uber1337 Hacker as a misunderstood maverick agent for changing that is only being kept back by The Man.
Graham is a smart man - far smarter than me, and he's written a lot more software. But the tone of the book is grating, because:
a) he keep...more
What I got is a string of thinly justified essays that are lionising The Uber1337 Hacker as a misunderstood maverick agent for changing that is only being kept back by The Man.
Graham is a smart man - far smarter than me, and he's written a lot more software. But the tone of the book is grating, because:
a) he keep...more
Feb 23, 2012
Aaron Heinen
rated it
5 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
Any Nerd willing to take advice from a successful genius
Easily THE most insightful book I have ever read. Paul Graham hits the nail on the head in every chapter. He does so by speaking from experience, his small 3 man startup was bought out by Yahoo! and then quickly went downhill as most things that are bought out by Yahoo! do... One of the best phrases from the book is talking about the concept of a 'job'. "Someone graduating from college thinks, and is told, they need to get a job, as if the more important thing were becoming yet another member of...more
This is a collection of essays, centred around technology by an erudite polymath. Anyone who has studied both programming and painting immeadiately gets my interest, I have dabbled in both these myself. The initial drawcard for me was the painters and hackers essay, comparing and contrasting great art with programming Paul Graham prefers the term 'hacker'. This is true delight to read and the painters and hackers essay is just the start. Here's an overview to give a flavour of it:
Why Nerds are U...more
Why Nerds are U...more
Paul Graham is an early web innovator (creating the first online store company, ViaWeb, which was later sold to Yahoo!) He clearly foresees technology trends (the iPhone and Cloud Computing) and is righteously opinionated - something important for creative, entrepreneurial people as he writes in one of the book's earliest essays.
PG is a libertarian and sees the world through those lenses (it happens to be a lens I share to some degree, so it was a refreshing read.) If you dislike libertarian tho...more
PG is a libertarian and sees the world through those lenses (it happens to be a lens I share to some degree, so it was a refreshing read.) If you dislike libertarian tho...more
I first heard of Paul Graham a few years ago and became very interested in him once I learned more about his dual nature as an artist and a programmer, something that I have found to be exceeding rare in the tech industry, I was starting to think I was one of the only people who liked to paint as well as program. His opinions and ideas expressed in this collection of essays resonated strongly with me and have reinforced my resolve to stick with programming rather that bail out to to a managerial...more
Jun 14, 2012
Kiril
added it
The problem is, there are so many things you can't say. If you said them all you'd have no time left for your real work. You'd have to turn into Noam Chomsky.
Challenge accepted! Let me see if I can get through to the end of this book though...
The above quote is just is an example of the similes/exemplifications Paul Graham employs I had most problems with in his essays. They are almost always placed at the end of paragraphs and are seemingly there to end the argument with a fireworks display, bu...more
There is another gold rush in Silicon valley and Graham has some controversial ideas and some undeniable nuggets of wisdom in this book for any brave soul looking to make it big.
As a fan of LISP, he claims LISP is the most powerful language out there. As an entrepreneur who has "made it" , he extols the virtues of hard work and flexibility. He lays out the characteristics that make startups and founders fail or succeed and relates it back to his own story.
A great read for anyone who has thought...more
As a fan of LISP, he claims LISP is the most powerful language out there. As an entrepreneur who has "made it" , he extols the virtues of hard work and flexibility. He lays out the characteristics that make startups and founders fail or succeed and relates it back to his own story.
A great read for anyone who has thought...more
Paul Graham style of writing is very engaging, he is very concise and goes to the point. I think you should read this book if you're a computer scientist or similar, because Mr. Graham's ideas on languages, and software start-ups are quite interesting and they're going to make you think, whether you agree with them or not.
Then if you are not a software professional, the book still has some engaging essays about freedom of speech, wealth creation and its unequal distribution. His thoughts go aga...more
Then if you are not a software professional, the book still has some engaging essays about freedom of speech, wealth creation and its unequal distribution. His thoughts go aga...more
A fun-to-read mix of insight and ideology, Graham is someone we can learn from no matter which side of the box he's thinking on. His essay on nerds ("Why Nerds are Unpopular") is still a favorite, even while his essay on disparity of wealth ("Mind the Gap") is among the most unreflective apologies for anarcho-capitalism I've ever read.
I was, at least, inspired enough while reading Graham to put a few more thoughts together; those interested can find them here.
I was, at least, inspired enough while reading Graham to put a few more thoughts together; those interested can find them here.
Paul Graham has some very interesting ideas on hacking. The perspective that draws a parallel between hackers and all creators makes a hacker feel great about himself/herself. Graham is open-minded. Moreover, his strength in inductive thinking cannot be ignored when he extends our disapproval of some prevalent ideas of the past to infer that the ideas that are ubiquitous today might also appear idiosyncratic in the future. Another similar idea is the parallel drawn between religion and programmi...more
A great read for all programmers and anyone interested in software. I don't agree with everything in the book, bit there are some terrific insights here. Some of my favorite quotes:
A programming language is for thinking of programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of. pg 22
Programmers were seen as technicians who translated the visions (if that is the word) of product managers into code. pg 23
Software has to be designed by hackers who understand design, not designers who know...more
A programming language is for thinking of programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of. pg 22
Programmers were seen as technicians who translated the visions (if that is the word) of product managers into code. pg 23
Software has to be designed by hackers who understand design, not designers who know...more
The following quotes are taken from Hackers & Painters, by Paul Graham. Page numbers are provided from the paperback published by O'Reilly in 2010, ISBN: 978-1-449-38955-0.
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Alberti, arguably the archetype of the Renaissance Man, writes that "no art, however minor, demands less than total dedication if you want to excel in it." 3
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In hacking, like painting, work comes in cycles. Sometimes you get excited about a new project and you want to work sixteen hours a day on it. Other times nothin...more
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Alberti, arguably the archetype of the Renaissance Man, writes that "no art, however minor, demands less than total dedication if you want to excel in it." 3
---
In hacking, like painting, work comes in cycles. Sometimes you get excited about a new project and you want to work sixteen hours a day on it. Other times nothin...more
In the interest of full disclosure, I read this entire book on my phone, and that means I read the whole thing in tiny bites: waiting in line at the grocery store, during the dead times before meetings, and so forth. Because of this it took me 6 months to read it and I'm not entirely sure I got all I could out of it.
It's a book of essays, and the author was one of the founders of Viaweb, which was eventually purchased by Yahoo and become Yahoo Shops, or Yahoo Store, or whatever the service is c...more
It's a book of essays, and the author was one of the founders of Viaweb, which was eventually purchased by Yahoo and become Yahoo Shops, or Yahoo Store, or whatever the service is c...more
Not an investment book per se, but a must-read for any aspiring entrepreneur or the investor who wants to know what it takes to run a successful business. Hackers & Painters is a collection of essays written by Paul Graham - a programmer and venture capitalist who was one of the first to successfully construct a business that ran entirely in “the cloud” of cyberspace. To be honest, Hackers & Painters is more like two books in one - the last half deals with spam filtering and computer pro...more
Some really great ideas from Paul Graham, venture capitalist/essayist extraordinaire. Despite the title, a lot of what is said is independent of computers, with an essay on education in particular being extremely enlightening. The libertarian bent might be a bit much for some(myself included), but a lot of the underlining ideas are incredibly well thought out. A must read for anyone interested in the world, if only for the essays on education and censorship.
Paul Graham is a fiercely intelligent human being and Hackers and Painters is a fantastic set of essays from the most astute author of our time. What really strikes you about PG's writing is not the tone or the atmosphere or anything else that we look for in other novels, it's the fact that everything he writes is right, and as such, the back cover is absolutely correct: the "Why are Nerds Unpopular?" essay is worth the price of admission alone.
If you're working in tech in the modern age, this book should be on your shelf.
Read it. Re-read it, occasionally.
The author is one of the first dot-com millionaires. He's also trained as a painter, has a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard and regularly posts some very thought-provoking essays on his blog. He doesn't blog often, but when he does it's worth reading.
This book is largely a collection of essays much like you'd find on this blog.
Read it. Re-read it, occasionally.
The author is one of the first dot-com millionaires. He's also trained as a painter, has a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard and regularly posts some very thought-provoking essays on his blog. He doesn't blog often, but when he does it's worth reading.
This book is largely a collection of essays much like you'd find on this blog.
This is a collection of essays from Paul Graham. I believe you can read most, if not all, of these essays on his website for free. You may want to give that a try first. I enjoyed this book very much, only a couple of 'chapters' seemed to drag on a bit or didn't quite grab my interest. If you're a programmer or part of geek/nerd culture you're probably going to enjoy the majority of this book.
I guess every Hacker, Entrepreneur should read this book. Paul Graham explores all the different topic from how to make a successful startup, a good hacker, attitude of nerds to aesthetics a good programming language.
In Chapters like 'Why nerds are unpopular' he exactly extracts how nerds are, with 'Hackers and Painters' he depicts attitude and creativity of hackers, in 'How to make wealth' he points out how we should look be in a startup ecosystem. Although there are some topics which might bo...more
In Chapters like 'Why nerds are unpopular' he exactly extracts how nerds are, with 'Hackers and Painters' he depicts attitude and creativity of hackers, in 'How to make wealth' he points out how we should look be in a startup ecosystem. Although there are some topics which might bo...more
Apr 07, 2012
Mike Kalmbach
rated it
4 of 5 stars
Recommends it for:
computer scientists, software business owners
A must-read for computer scientists. I enjoyed the concept of the Blub paradox, and how a lot of times, the way to succeed in business is to use the right technology to solve your problem, not the most "in-fashion" technology. Paul Graham has a lot of great points, and this may have been the only book assigned in my Master's program that I actually enjoyed.
Well worth a read. The book is filled to the brim with insights. Some of which have become common sense since this book was written, therefore some essays feel a bit dated. Personally I enjoyed 'Why Nerds Are Unpopular' and 'How to Make Wealth' the most. Grahams remarks about education as well as the economic system resonated deeply with me.
I really love Paul Graham's essays, they're like being in the company of a wise older uncle whose done it all. Lots of great advice about programming, art, design, and start ups. It's a bit of an old book though, published in 2004 so it's a bit funny to read about his (very accurate) predictions about the future of the internet and our technology.
I really enjoy Graham's witty and insightful writing style. This is a collection of his essays, many of which are available on his site. They cover a wide variety of topics: why programmers do what they do, the roles of various languages and the future of programming, the creative process and its role in creation of new ways we think and work.
Graham believes utterly in his own powers of reason for all things. This produces some interesting essays and some less interesting ones (especially when parroting libertarian talking points). He shines most in his discussion of start-up companies, entrepreneurs, and what he learned while getting his own company off the ground. Full of food for thought either way--worth the time. Reading Hackers & Painters was like being in dialogue with another fascinating mind.
Enjoyable -- some absolute gems. Anything on the future or history of technology should be read twice;
the digressions about taxation/social policy (often presented as an argument with an editorial-page strawman) were, well -- you know what they say about opinions...
the digressions about taxation/social policy (often presented as an argument with an editorial-page strawman) were, well -- you know what they say about opinions...
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Paul Graham is an essayist, programmer, and programming language designer. In 1995 he developed with Robert Morris the first web-based application, Viaweb, which was acquired by Yahoo in 1998. In 2002 he described a simple statistical spam filter that inspired a new generation of filters. He's currently working on a new programming language called Arc, a new book on startups, and is one of the par...more
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“There are few sources of energy so powerful as a procrastinating college student.”
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38 people liked it
“If you want to make money at some point, remember this, because this is one of the reasons startups win. Big companies want to decrease the standard deviation of design outcomes because they want to avoid disasters. But when you damp oscillations, you lose the high points as well as the low. This is not a problem for big companies, because they don't win by making great products. Big companies win by sucking less than other big companies. ”
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8 people liked it
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Mar 09, 2013 10:27pm