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Hackers & Painters Review

Graham is obviously really smart. He covers both obvious and complex ideas really clearly and convincingly. The first portion of the book is largely on social theory/philosophy/economics, while the latter is computer science. All of these are of interest to me, so I thought the book was phenomenal, as was the author's insight.

The footnotes and glossary are entertaining as well.

Hackers & Painters Overview

"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 who call themselves hackers. Who are these people, what motivates them, and why should you care?

Consider these facts: Everything around us is turning into computers. Your typewriter is gone, replaced by a computer. Your phone has turned into a computer. So has your camera. Soon your TV will. Your car was not only designed on computers, but has more processing power in it than a room-sized mainframe did in 1970. Letters, encyclopedias, newspapers, and even your local store are being replaced by the Internet.

Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age, by Paul Graham, explains this world and the motivations of the people who occupy it. In clear, thoughtful prose that draws on illuminating historical examples, Graham takes readers on an unflinching exploration into what he calls "an intellectual Wild West."

The ideas discussed in this book will have a powerful and lasting impact on how we think, how we work, how we develop technology, and how we live. Topics include the importance of beauty in software design, how to make wealth, heresy and free speech, the programming language renaissance, the open-source movement, digital design, internet startups, and more.

And here's a taste of what you'll find in Hackers & Painters:

"In most fields the great work is done early on. The paintings made between 1430 and 1500 are still unsurpassed. Shakespeare appeared just as professional theater was being born, and pushed the medium so far that every playwright since has had to live in his shadow. Albrecht Durer did the same thing with engraving, and Jane Austen with the novel.

Over and over we see the same pattern. A new medium appears, and people are so excited about it that they explore most of its possibilities in the first couple generations. Hacking seems to be in this phase now.

Painting was not, in Leonardo's time, as cool as his work helped make it. How cool hacking turns out to be will depend on what we can do with this new medium."

Andy Hertzfeld, co-creator of the Macintosh computer, says about Hackers & Painters: "Paul Graham is a hacker, painter and a terrific writer. His lucid, humorous prose is brimming with contrarian insight and practical wisdom on writing great code at the intersection of art, science and commerce."

Paul Graham, designer of the new Arc language, was the creator of Yahoo Store, the first web-based application. In addition to his PhD in Computer Science from Harvard, Graham also studied painting at the Rhode Island School of Design and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence.

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Customer Reviews

Essays - Daniel Brown - Los Angeles, California United States
Thought provoking and entertaining collection of essays. If you liked 'Joel on Software' you will like this.

poorly written and uninteresting - E. Stemer - DC
Any new ideas in this book? Not really. Simple thoughts, mostly either quite trivial or simply wrong, drove by a person whose confidence is only equalled by pretentiousness. I hope "nerds" are smarter than this, they deserve to be praised by someone who's idea of what is "important" (not specified in the book, unfortunately, I'd be interested to hear) are more "important" than what the author believes important things are...

The nerd boy who won - Einar Waaler Høst - Oslo Norway
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 prejudices he may cook up, including some completely ridiculous views on the general superiority of geeks over regular people. The only reason so many of his readers seem to accept these views must be that he's preaching to the choir: certainly his geek audience would dearly like them to be true. His arcane and naive notions of art and aesthetics are too embarrassing to even discuss. Oh, and the smugness is just insufferable.

*** Product Information and Prices Stored: Sep 18, 2010 07:00:13

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Saturday, September 18, 2010