Hackers and Painters is a good read. I enjoyed learning about the author's perspective on programming trends. I really enjoyed learning about his enthusiasm for Lisp. This book is not a how-to, but a collection of essays describing the authors views, opinions, and experiences with various programming topics. I definitely recommend it.

I live in the heart of silicon valley and moved here for creative reasons.

In 2003, I got this book and let it sit on my shelf until I heard about a Y combinator event at Stanford last year.

I read it before the event where Paul was going to speak and have read it 3x since. It reminds me why I live in palo alto and why I get results by combining hacker, Type A thoughts with left brain, artsy.

I have a technical background and this book answered a lot of questions that was on my mind. I was looking for something that will guide me in my own startup company. This book is an eye opener. Very helpful in both technical as well as the business side of any startup.

When the time is right a mentor can come into your life in any form, so this book is my mentor and has tremendously helped to chart out the course for my company.

I have a technical background and this book answered a lot of questions that was on my mind. I was looking for something that will guide me in my own startup company. This book is an eye opener. Very helpful in both technical as well as the business side of any startup.

When the time is right a mentor can come into your life in any form, so this book is my mentor and has tremendously helped to chart out the course for my company.

Most of the book is a long-winded lecture about how great Lisp is, and about how that is the language of the cool, smart people.

There is very little about painting, it is only briefly mentioned in the beginning.

The first chapter is quite good, then it gets more preaching and more dull rapidly.

Mr Graham is obviously a smart guy and a capable writer. The fact that he was part of a dot-com start up that actually succeeded seems to have gone to his head though. Somehow the fact that he was in the right place with the right idea at the right time enables him to declare Lisp as the uber language, and everybody who doesn't see that is a dullard?

The title suggests a book which is whimisical and fun. This book is a preachy diatribe by a pompous hacker who things he has the proper world-view for everyone.

Nice reading all the time, even if the opinions are questionable from my point of view. I really enjoyed it.

If you've never heard of Paul Graham, this book provides an excellent introduction. Paul is a hacker (in the original sense of the word), a technology innovator and a philosopher for the computer age. This book of essays runs the gamut from 'why nerds are unpopular' to fixing the spam problem to what makes a 'dream language'.

As Paul says in the intro, each chapter is independent of the others and you can skip around as you like. You'll get the general feel for Paul's ideas in all of the essays and some overlap is evident. I read the book straight through and enjoyed every chapter.

Paul is a master of the Lisp language and describes how some modern languages are heading in the direction of Lisp. To solve really tough problems in a less powerful language, you tend to end up writing a Lisp interpreter in that language. He also describes why everyone isn't using Lisp for every program they write.

If you are a hacker or hacker wannabe, this book offers excellent insight into the mind of a master. If you are a 'pointy-haired' manager, you'll get a better understanding of how truly talented programmers think. If you are involved in a startup company, this book describes several topics that might help give you a competitive edge.

Most of all, this is a really fun book that will earn a permanent space on your bookshelf.

"Hackers and Painters" is Dr. Paul Graham's take on big ideas and how it all relates back to computer programming. Yes, the jacket cover categorization is /programming so if you are wondering how come "Revenge of the nerds" and "How to make Wealth" are part of programming education, don't be surprised if you are recommended to read Heidegger for etymology enlightenment as a software developer.

Reading Paul Graham is an addiction and an intellectual fix for most of us who may find themselves lost in the mundane code mazes of our day job and go out looking for answer. These are the pearls from a Harvard Computer Science PhD who made Bayesian inference a house hold name. This ~250 page book is a collection of seminal/web style writings on a diverse array of topics in fifteen essays. The book is all about ideas, thoughts and questions for instance in "Good and Bad Procrastination" Paul states

1. What are the most important problems in your field?
2. Are you working on one of them?
3. Why not?

How simpler can you get but yet, reader would find analogies from anglo-saxon nobles to modern day architecture and renaissance paintings. Reading Paul Graham is important if you are a technology enthusiast; its imperative providing that programming is merely not your day job but a passion for life. It's not a book for learning lisp, hacking or programming for that matter, but a very different genre. So without going all elite, if you are not sure this is a right book for you, add his writings to your RSS aggregator and you'll soon find the book sitting next to your pillow. And I just couldn't resist quoting this about writing

"I think it's far more important to write well than most people realize. Writing doesn't just communicate ideas; it generates them. If you're bad at writing and don't like to do it, you'll miss out on most of the ideas writing would have generated."

All essays are independent of each other, so you do not need to read every single essay.

Chapter 1: "Why Nerds are Unpopular." The author suggests that the reason is because the nerds simply do not want to be popular, they would rather be smart.

Chapter 2: "Hackers and Painters." The chapter points out similarities between hackers and painters. Both, for example, are makers.

Chapter 3: "What you can't Say."

Chapter 4: "The Other Road Ahead." The chapter discusses the migration from desktop software to web based software. Discusses the beginning of Yahoo Store and why it succeeded.

Chapter 7: "Mind the Gap."

Chapter 8: "A Plan for Spam." This is the essay that shifted the spam detection business from using rules to using statistics. Mr. Graham shows how to use Bayesian filtering and why it is superior over rules.

Chapter 10: "Programming Languages Explained." the author explains programming languages - what makes them strong and what makes them weak. It is interesting that the author mentions of Prolog: "A language can be very abstract, but offer the wrong abstractions. I think this happens in Prolog, for example. It has fabulously powerful abstractions for solving about 2% of problems, and the rest of the time you are bending over backwards to misuse these abstractions..." As a student who had to learn Prolog for a class I would agree with the author. The abstractions Prolog offers are wonderful, sometimes Prolog could do something in a line that would require other languages a dozen. Other times simple manipulations on data structures in Prolog would take a dozen or more lines, while in other languages could be done in a few lines. If these problems are remedied in LISP then I am sold.

Chapter 11: "The Hundred-Year Language." Discusses how to determine if the programming language you are using today will exist for 1-100 year(s).

LISP seems to be a powerful language, especially after reading the great advantages and capabilities it offers.

Paul is a very good writer and the book is interesting. Many of the chapters are taken from previously published essays on his website. You can read most of them there; looking busy at work at the same time!

Some of the chapters at the end should have been edited more for content. Because these were written as essays rather than a book there is a noticable amount of overlap.

If you are into technology I think you will certainly find this material fun and easy to read whether you spring for the book or read the web version.

Thumbs up goes to Paul Graham for Hackers & Painters. He's a hacker and a painter, and although most of his essays printed in the book are available online, I really recommend buying this book.

After long hours and days coding on uninteresting projects, this book reminds me of my love of writing software. Paul Graham even inspired me to learn Lisp and I will always be greatful for that. These essays help me maintain my sanity and inspire me to produce beauty while I code.

I'm sure that Graham thinks that the ideas he discusses in this set of essays are "big" in his book. In fact, some of them are insightful and I did enjoy some of them. I very much enjoy reading others thinking about the craft. It is still such a relatively new discipline, that individuals like Graham create thought patterns that shape our future. I would have to put Software State-of-the-Art: Selected Papers ahead of Hackers and Painters, but the latter is certainly more philosophical and reflective than the former. Graham does certainly know how to get "down and dirty" if he has to as illustrated in "A Plan for Spam" (will someone tell me why more e-mail readers don't implement the Bayesian filter he proposes?). I would give this one three stars.

its a decent read. most of the time the author makes you feel like you are 14 and he is addressing your 8th grade graduation ceremony.
he has some insightful ideas most of the stuff is pretty pedantic though.
don't buy this book. just go to his website and read the essay he posted. they are all word for word chapters out of his book.
http://paulgraham.com/articles.html

In "Hackers and Painters," Paul Graham presents 15 essays on topics that are variously related to computer programming. Graham has two major accomplishments to his name in the hacking world: He was one of the architects of Viaweb, an internet startup which ultimately became Yahoo Shops, and one of the first succesful hosted web applications. He was also one of the first to talk about applying Bayesian filtering to the spam problem; Bayesian filtering has arguably been the most successful technique for reducing spam in individual mailboxes.

I'd advise prospective readers of this book to skip chapters 1, 3, 6 and 7, at least until after you've read the rest of the book. These four essays are the weakest in the book, and having them clustered near the beginning almost made me put the book down and stop reading.

I'm glad I didn't stop, though. The chapters on software development are excellent; Graham provides some of the best insight I've seen into how programmers think. Programmers will find useful ideas that can be applied to their work; non-programmers may get an insight into how programmers think.

The last seven chapters are particularly well done; in these, Graham discusses the nitty-gritty details of program design, choice of programming languages, and design of programming languages. Graham is occasionally arrogant, but his arrogance here comes from experience and success; although not everyone may agree with his arguments about the superiority of LISP over every other programming language, one can at least recognize the thoroughness of the discussion and draw one's own conclusions.

The four essays I mentioned above, by contrast, are much more poorly edited. In particular, I found Graham's economic arguments to be particularly clumsy in their lack of acknowledgement of any other points of view. It's not that Graham's wrong-- I agree with many of his ideas-- but particularly in these somewhat political chapters, he wields his words more like a blunt instrument than like a musical one.

Graham's book is indeed well written (most parts), but the author seems to really appreciate himself a much more than he's actually worth. He made a successful internet startup during the dotcom era, and discovered the usefulness of bayesian data analysis to fight spam. That's it.

What makes him average, is that 1) he treats other people's ideas less worth than his own, and 2) his views are fixed to the One True Way (which is often also different than the way of the others). This is a combination of elitism and ignorance -- and also exactly what he is proclaiming against.

The author writes about ideas that he believes being 'heretic', or unspeakable. Things that cannot be said in public. Personally, I find some of these ideas just small, interesting steps of intellectual exploring. The rest of the opinions are just plain conservative - to the European reader at least.

I believe that this book would be a good read to the average middle manager of a big software development company. After this book you might know a little bit more about how computer programmers think. For hackers, go to the author's website and see the essays there.

I'm an experiensed software developer and to me reading this book was absolutely refreshing. It won't teach you anything in particular but it will feed your mind and curiosity great deal - just one needs after years of office work.

This book is a collection of assorted essays, each covering some more or less software-related topic, like history of arts (huh ?). Political correctness, design of things, nerds' life and simply ways of life made their way into this marvellous book.

Some author's points are controversial, while to some I couldn't agree more. The magic part is that the author's judgements are based on not just what he knows or believes, but also on what he feels for no particular reason, and this is the approach I fully appreciate. Only the best books make your mind feel free, and this is one of them.

For the past few months I've taken to reading all of Paul Graham's essays on his website and eventually devided to get this book. The writing is top-notch to be sure. He even inspired me to pick up a Lisp dialect (Scheme). I just have two gripes about this book though. First is that you only get a few more essays that he does not publish on his website. I knew this when I bought the book, but I don't think that the essays that can be only found in his book are wholly that remarkable. Second, I wish the footnotes could be found at the bottom of each page, or maybe even at the end of each chapter instead of all grouped at the end of the book. Other than that I was very impressed by the book.

first off let me say that this collection of essays is certainly an entertaining and quite amusing read. i often found myself (as a hacker and LISP programmer) chuckling and nodding in recognition , but... the author is very presumptuous and a bit full of himself. these are not big ideas and they are certainly not 'philosophical' as another reviewer commented. philosophy like computer science is difficult, which these essays certainly aren't. they are in many places opinionated and quite narrow minded. i found his opinions often conservative or at least naive when it came to both painting and politics. if you want a light read pick it up, if you're looking for big ideas go for SICP or Nietzsche or something. p.s. you can read many of his essays on line at his website.

It is a very practical yet philosophical look at the world of design, programming and the influence of internet. Paul makes the case that - Programming is more art than science. There are tons of thought provoking ideas presented in this book. Many of the problems he attempts to solve are the very same ones that we usually think about, but never actually get to solving as elegantly as he has. He has a good selection of topics covered and a fresh perspective to offer. There are many nuggets of profound wisdom, such as "Thinking outside the box is good, but speaking outside the box can get you in trouble". He also discusses the nature of constantly changing moral fashions and how to cope with it effectively.
It is written in a very simple to understand format with good analogies. This is the best book in this genre and this happens to be my favorite genre of all.

This book is definitely a good read. If you have a technical background you can read it real quick too!. But I gave it 3 stars cause of some of the nagging things which I felt about it. Some of these things could have been sorted out with some editing (since most of these are essays which the author wrote over a period of time and are freely available on his website also):

1. Too ViaWeb (a company started by the authot) centric. Mentioned just too many times!

2. Agenda: It just seemed that the author had an agenda to promote. The innumerable indirect comments on Microsoft, Bill Gates, How Java is bad etc. could have been been more directly mentioned and discussed.

3. Hackers - Too much has been said and discussed about whats hackers want to do/like to do etc. As someone already mentioned many people won't relate to it that much!

All said and done a decent book and given the authors background (as a hacker!) I would recommend it (not highly though!). I actually bought it cause of a link from ITA Software's (which is mentioned and praised in the book) website!.

hi,

This book is definitely a good read. If you have a technical background you can read it real quick too!. But I gave it 3 stars cause of some of the nagging things which I felt about it. Some of these things could have been sorted out with some editing (since most of these are essays which the author wrote over a period of time and are freely available on his website also):

1. Too ViaWeb (a company started by the authot) centric. Mentioned just too many times!

2. Agenda: It just seemed that the author had an agenda to promote. The innumerable indirect comments on Microsoft, Bill Gates, How Java is bad etc. could have been been more directly mentioned and discussed.

3. Hackers - Too much has been said and discussed about whats hackers want to do/like to do etc. As someone already mentioned many people won't relate to it that much!

All said and done a decent book and given the authors background (as a hacker!) I would recommend it (not highly though!). I actually bought it cause of a link from ITA Software's (which is mentioned and praised in the book) website!.

regards,
Sumit.

I would have to say these are one of those books that keeps you coming back for more everyday (if you're like me who saids a chapter a day). While some of the late chapters can get a bit technical espcially if you're not familiar with the programming languages but like the arthur said, you can skip a chapter if you like which is only 1 chapter.
Otherwise, this is a very insightful book.

I found the opening chapter to be exceptionally insightful. Graham discusses in detail the culture of being a teen, particularly a teen in a public school setting, and what sets nerds apart. His description of the sort of "Lord of the Flies" hierarchy that is created is dead on in my opinion.

He points out that prison wardens primary duties are to keep the prisoners in one place, feed them, and keep them from killing each other. The school principal's job in many cases is only a small step up from that because the job is to keep the kids in one place, feed them, and keep them from killing each other and to attempt to provide some level of education at the same time.

I found the second essay equally compelling. Graham talks at length about how the world sees computer programming as a "science" when it is in fact more of an art. They compare programmers to physicists and mathematicians while Graham claims they are better compared with painters and other artists.

Common "wisdom" on computer programming suggests that the program should be well thought out and planned before the first line of code is typed. Graham suggests that programming is more of a living creation that is sketched and then fleshed out over time and that it takes on new life as it evolves to the final product.

(...)

I found the opening chapter to be exceptionally insightful. Graham discusses in detail the culture of being a teen, particularly a teen in a public school setting, and what sets nerds apart. His description of the sort of "Lord of the Flies" hierarchy that is created is dead on in my opinion.

He points out that prison wardens primary duties are to keep the prisoners in one place, feed them, and keep them from killing each other. The school principal's job in many cases is only a small step up from that because the job is to keep the kids in one place, feed them, and keep them from killing each other and to attempt to provide some level of education at the same time.

I found the second essay equally compelling. Graham talks at length about how the world sees computer programming as a "science" when it is in fact more of an art. They compare programmers to physicists and mathematicians while Graham claims they are better compared with painters and other artists.

Common "wisdom" on computer programming suggests that the program should be well thought out and planned before the first line of code is typed. Graham suggests that programming is more of a living creation that is sketched and then fleshed out over time and that it takes on new life as it evolves to the final product.

Tony Bradley is a consultant and writer with a focus on network security, antivirus and incident response. He is the About.com Guide for Internet / Network Security (http://netsecurity.about.com), providing a broad range of information security tips, advice, reviews and information. Tony also contributes frequently to other industry publications. For a complete list of his freelance contributions you can visit Essential Computer Security (http://www.tonybradley.com).

Do you want to:
- become a better programmer
- design a better programming language
- understand innovation from a historical viewpoint
- understand the goals of Lisp
- understand nerds
- understand internet startup companies
- understand spam filtering
- become a better artist
- become wealthy
- be an independent thinker

This heavily opinionated book was a gripping read.
It is a collection of very readable essays, each addressing one
of the above topics. The author is an expert in several of them.
For example, he originated the concept of bayesian filtering on
which are based most current anti-spam systems. He also
co-founded a successful internet startup company.
I don't agree with all the author's opinions, for example his
preferences in programming languages. But the book
helped me understand the relative merits of Lisp, Perl, Python,
and other popular languages. And now I want to try out the
author's language, Arc, though I suspect it will stretch
my few un-allocated neurons to the breaking point.

After graduating in 2004, I walked away with the exact thoughts as this essay, (Why Nerds are Unpopular). I was neither a "nerd", nor was I the coolest person. I mastered the art of being friends with everyone and viewing the false world of high school objectively. I have never seen an essay as accurate as this, parallel to my views and experiences. The only problem is there is a "berlin wall" between people knowing these facts and details, and actually acting to make a change. Till then, the nomenclature, nerds, will stand.

I just read this recently because I always found the hardback price for this book a little prohibitive. It is well worth it.

Like many, I first encountered Graham upon reading his essay about "Why Nerds are Unpopular" his simple, golden, thesis really hit home and explained the situation accurately. On this premise, I followed-through with the purchase of the book.

I feel Graham operates in narrative economics or economic histories. His essays are not laden with statistics / numbers (but they do show when called for) but his valuation of the culure of The High School, The Corporation, The History of The Creation of the Third Estate (mercantile class) follows that narrative explanation of politics and economics along the lines of _Kapital_ or _The Wealth of Nations_ or de Toqueville (albeit with much less dead wood).

Graham spares no feelings concerning the problems with the culture of institutions that squander talent: the corporation and the high school.

In the latter apathetic teachers (who wouldn't be on their pittance, no thanks to the "education president"), a contrived world with messed up priorities in a contrived world with 'create more suburban affluent children' as its *only* priority, etc.

In the former people rarely find the opportunity to be, as Steve Jobs says, Insanely Great.

Graham tracks out a hacker superclass, Nietzschean overmen Ayn Rand-scale egos and the skills to back it up. In some ways, Graham is a more effective demonstration of the principles of _Atlas Shrugged_ than that pile of dreck itself is.

Rand-haters, don't let that dissuade you from the purchase! Graham is not operating on the "everyone owes us" model of genius , he's operating on the "where can we best be free to explore".

...and his question of "where can we best be free to explore" ultimately gets a historical treatment: Amsterdam 17th c., Florence 15th c., etc. It's a real treat to have read this right after finishing Stephenson's _Quicksilver_ - a fictional exploration of the intersection of commerce and genius and then a non-fiction explanation of the latter.

In addition to this social history component of the book there are some in-depth tech chats. You could skip these if you want only the social history angle, but I found his case for learning the LISP programming language compelling.

I'd recommend this book for any hacker or anyone who wants to understand their hacker (hint, hint, bosses) or any ignored wives / girlfriends who realize that to love a hacker puts them in a long tradition of very patient, and very much revered ladies.

In all, a real treat that repays the reader's time investment handily.

Paul Graham penned a unique book: A collection of essays that combine personal and business experience.

The author sees great software development as an art form.

"Great software, likewise, requires a fanatical devotion to beauty," Graham writes. "If you look inspire good software, you will find that parts no one is ever supposed to see are beautiful too."

The collection offers readers positive advice and leadership tips; a roadmap to what is increasingly becoming a computerized future.

The book is a mixture of IT-related and non-IT-related chapters. There is an ongoing theme about computing and "hacking", but the main topic in some of the chapters is not IT definitely. I loved these. He talks about secondary education in the USA, heretical thoughts, distribution of wealth, spam and design. He is insightful and sometimes brilliant. 9 out of 10 for these chapters. I am not giving him a 10 because I have my reservations of his application of blatant neoliberal ideas (as if they were the only alternative) to the discussion of wealth generation.

The really bad news is, the chapters on programming are extremely poor. After reading the table of contents and the first two chapters (on non-IT topics), I was thinking to myself: "well, perhaps this book contains the first serious approach ever to defending open source software", and "maybe this guy has a chapter as good as this on the philosophy underpinning different programming languages". What a disappointment! 1 out of 10 here.

Non-IT chapters are rigurously documented (I read all the end notes) and solidly argumented. The chapters on computing, on the other hand, are full of non-substantiated statements and weak arguments. They are nort much worse than the average crappy article you can find on the web, but after the excellence of the rest of the book, it as a surprise hard to bear.

I will give you some examples. The book's publication date is May 2004, although I assume that some of the chapters were written some time ago. Graham says in the book that he rewrote some of the essays just for the book, though, so I assume that he had the opportunity to fix problems and add updated material on the older chapters. Despite of this, he repeats nonsensical statements like that applications that run on a given operating system tend to be written in the same lenguage as the operating system. Well, that could have been true 20 years ago. Perhaps 10. But not now. Windows NT, 2000 and XP are majorly written in C/C++. How many business applications are written in C/C++? Not many. Most are written in Visual Basic, Java or even Delphi. Odd enough, Graham does not even mention .NET (or anything related to .NET) in his book. How can this be absent from a discussion on computer programming published in 2004?

Near the end of the book, Graham writes about the success of his startup Viaweb. And he claims that the first cause of their success was that they chose a "better" programming language than the ones that everyone else was using at the moment. They chose Lisp. And he correlates using Lisp to being successful, in their case. He goes on enumerating the unique features of Lisp and explaining how Lisp is the best language. Not for him, not for any particular kind of application. Simple, the best. I immediately suspected something: this guy was successful not because Lisp is the best, but because he is very good at using Lisp. And I was right. It turns out that Graham is an expert in Lisp. Surprise, surprise. How come that he chose Lisp? Maybe the fact that he had published 2 books on Lisp helped a little? Perhaps he was still writing the second one when he started Viaweb. But he was definitely into Lisp before that. If he had been an expert in Java, I bet he would have chosen Java and wrote a book explaining how they succeeded because they chose Java, the absolute best language. Of course we tend to choose the tools we are familiar with, and we are most productive with them. Graham himself talks about this in his book. Why then is he trying to convince us that Lisp was the absolute cause of their success? Biased, biased.

The most disappointing passage of the book, however, is "Open Source", a short section in chapter 10. Graham arguments that open source is better because it has a major difference with non-open source: you get the source code so you can change it if you want to. Come on! I can't imagine my mom, in a hypothetical open-source-dominated future, saying "well, I don't really like how OpenOutlook handles my outgoing e-mail, so this afternoon I will rewrite the SMTP engine". Graham seems a brilliant guy, so I am sure he realises that _the_vast_majority_of_computer_users_ do not have technical training in programming. For these people, having the source code means nothing. It's useless. Just a heap of weird text that they cannot understand. Is like getting the electronics diagrams and schematics of your DVD player when you buy it. If you find something wrong or something you don't like, just grab a screwdriver, a soldering iron, and fix it! Hahahaha! Ridiculous. Graham goes on "You can't fix bugs in Microsoft Windows because you don't have the source code". Wrong. You can't fix bugs in Windows because you (i.e. the vast majority of computer users) don't know how to program. Having the source code would not help whatsoever. It gets even more ludicrous some lines later: "...the advantage of open source isn't just that you can fix it when you need to. It's that everyone can." Really? Everyone? My mom included? I'm rolling on the floor laughing. Furthermore, Graham states that "open source software has fewer bugs than non-open source because more people has looked at its source code and bugs have been fixed". He does not provide any backing or reference for this. Applying common sense, I would say that many more people have looked at Windows than to Linux, for example. And therefore Windows is much more tested than Linux. These people do not look at the source code, but this is not important. We are talking about the functionality of the operating system, and that's what people test when they use it everyday in a variety of situations. Another manifestation of this is the huge number of viruses and exploits that exist on Windows as compared to Linux. It is evident, since many more people are working on it, around it and against it. "Given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow" may be true, but when applied to the eyeballs of millions of people using Windows, not the people looking at the source code of Linux. I don't claim this to be an absolute truth, but it comes from common sense and is, at least, an alternative worth considering. Graham does not even mention it.

It seems evident that Graham has fallen into equating "everyone" with "hackers like me". Reality is different. Reality is that only a small fraction of computer users have training in programming. And of those, only a fraction would be willing to rewrite part of an operating system, even if it is wrong! Graham should look beyond himself and his immediate circle. He has demonstrated capable of doing that superbly in some of the other chapters in the book, and even boasts about taking his brain into unconventional terrain as an intellectual exercise. So why is he so narrow-minded here? Beats me.

Oh, well. I recommend the book. It's nice reading, refreshing and extremely interesting. Just skip the bad bits.

In our celebrity worshipping culture, it seems that getting the limelight or making a large amount of money by themselves confer great wisdom. Paul Graham is undoubtedly a very intelligent man and a talented software developer who was able to make a lot of money back in the bubble days. As you read his essays, though, you will be disappointed to find that he is no wiser nor more capable of "Big Ideas" than you or I.

His essays are expressions of personal opinion and taste. He seems to believe in absolute truths, but disguises his beliefs as philosophical analysis. His views on wealth creation are those of a nouveau riche techie, unable to see the miserable lifestyles billions of others call life. If we are not wealthy it is because we simply don't have what it takes, period.

You won't find much substance behind his arguments, just vague analogies, anecdotes, and cherished beliefs. Frankly, his point of view verges on the magical-religious, rather than the scientific. Musings on art and aesthetics make it quite clear that he prefers representational art over abstract. I can only wonder if that terrible phrase "But is it really Art?" has ever touched his lips.

He hints that he is a Libertarian, and his essays bear this out. Not a very convincing one, but the more common sort that is unable to see that other people's lives do not resemble his own. It is baffling that Libertarians of this stripe are unable to see that laws exist because many people break them. For him, those without wealth are simply not motivated enough to take the bull by the horns and be successful. Most people are not wealthy not necessarily out of laziness, but but due to a gamut of other causes as well. Some of these causes can be resolved and the person freed to a Libertarian dream life, but some cannot. It is the latter that Paul and others of his ilk simply cannot understand. This shallowness pervades his two essays on wealth. It seems he believes the problem to be that people are upset that some people are wealthy. Wrong, Paul. The greatest problem facing humanity today, bar none, is that so many billions of people are trapped in grinding poverty. Little talks on start-ups and IPOs are essentially irrelevant. He is convinced that most wealthy people alive today are wealthy due to their pluck, focus, and high-achiever drive. In his view of history, it was during the Industrial Revolution that "wealth creation definitively replaced corruption as the best way to get rich." No mention is made of whether slavery or exploitation are an acceptable component of "wealth creation." In his own words, "it seems [odd] to say that it's unjust that certain kinds of work are underpaid," emphasis his.

He has a Programming Language essay where he derides "inexperienced programmers' judgements about the relative merits of programming languages," and goes on to make disparaging winks and nods in the direction of Java. He makes it quite clear throughout the book that Lisp is the language of choice. I assume we can look forward to his Lisp implementations of OpenGL and ecommerce web sites. Absurd? Of course!

An essay about what programming languages will look like a hundred years from now is trapped in the present. His worries are of compiler optimizations and concise syntax, concerns that may have been central over the past 50 years, but will have faded into the background a century from now. Even though he estimates that computers will be at least a million times more powerful then than now, he expects programs written for them in these futuristic languages would "run acceptably well on our hardware." The only interesting remark in the chapter is that such languages might "make a great pseudocode."

I have many more gripes, but I do not pretend to be especially wise myself. I am a developer of average skill and intelligence, but if even I can see so many glaring errors and simplistic opinions, how can this book have gotten past the O'Reilly editors so easily? Nevertheless, I recommend this book. It will stimulate your thinking regardless of where you stand on the issues he discusses.

While it's possible that Mr. Graham didn't start a business and sell it for (I imagine) a mint to Yahoo! just so he would have time to edify me with his writings, it has worked out that way. I bought this book as much because I owe him for all the information I've picked up off his website (and the two Lisp books I bought used, including a PRISTINE copy of On Lisp that somebody sold at half.com for $25.00) as because I thought I would find the subject matter of particular interest. But what do I know? It's all fascinating. And well-written, too, if you can forgive Graham's habit of beginning sentences with "and."

Blaise Pascal once wrote, "I have made this letter longer than usual because I lack the time to make it shorter." Mr. Graham has taken to time to make this book shorter. I highly recommend to to geeks, nerds, and even unscarred smart people everywhere.

This collection of essays is an excellent read. Rather than another tome of technical instructions that will be outdated by the time you read this, the author talks about the philosophy behind the culture of programming. Although there is an essay on how hackers compare to other artists, the premise of the book is really about hackers, their behavior, and motivations. One of the things I like most about the book is the true but sometimes contrarian and controversial nature of the information. It's very well thought out, and the positions are easily defended, but there's a good deal in here that is not obvious because it runs contrary to what you might think if you aren't from the programming world. A very entertaining read, I didn't want to put it down until I finished.

I saw this book on O'Reilly's site and was quite interested, so I ordered it. The quick review? It was a very interesting read, and at least half of it is understandable to people with all varieties of computer knowledge, as Graham is very good at explaining things simply.

It's basically a collection of essays that Graham (a Lisp programmer, an artist, and one of the parners who started Viaweb, which produced a web-based online store creator which was bought by Yahoo! and to this day runs the Yahoo Store). The essays all flow very nicely with each other, so there are few parts in the book that feel random. And definately go from easy to understand to everyone, into more complex as the book goes on.

He explains a lot of typical "Hacker" (good programmers, not people who illegally break into computers!) culture, and compares it to other art forms. He starts out by explaining nerds, and why they are so unpopular in school, a fun chapter that makes me feel a bit better about being such a nerd in High School. The book goes into internet startups, programming languages, and it's only in the last three or four chapters that he gets into specifics which may lose the ordinary reader. Still, from the chapters preceding those you get a great snapshot of the Hacker world.

I was very pleased with how he used his artist background to draw historical and artistic parallels between the art world and the computer world. And these strong associations really made this book different from others that I've read hacker culture.

This book was definately worth my time.

Paul Graham founded a company and got rich during the Internet-boom years. His essays regularly get posted to /.Shashdot.org. Most, if not all, of the book appeared originally on his web site.

Paul Graham is one of the few good commentators on the current state of what are called hacking, programming, and/or the Computer Business today. Of course, all of these are, in part, tied to the greater Internet geek culture that has arisen in the last decade. He writes about many varied topics, including being a nerd and programmer, running a business, and other more esoteric as well as down-to-earth topics. These topics tie together into what could be called an overall theme of Internet geek culture or simply hacking.

Graham is a good writer and understands his topics. Those who claim he's jumping all over the place must not be members of the hacking sub-culture. But this is a collection of essays. So, multiple topics are allowed. However, all of his concerns are directed at a narrow audience, made up of people in that culture. So, outsides may not understand the context of it and see it as commentaries on a unified whole.

As to those who commented on his politics... I don't know if he really has any. If he has any I would guess it would be some form of diluted Libertarianism.

Overall, he appears to tackle subjects similar to those taken up by Joel Spolsky (Joel on Software), Richard Gabriel and Jerry Pournelle of Chaos Manor (when he's discussing computers).

Overall, Graham is somebody whose work I read on a regular basis. I don't always agree with his viewpoint, but he'll always make me think, and that's more than most writers accomplish.

The book is a interesting read but the title doesn't represent what the book is about. There is only a small chapter on painting and hacking, the rest is just essays on spam, startups & lisp. The book felt like a random collection of essays & opinions.

It's great to see O'Reilly stepping out of reference work now and again. The Cathedral and the Bazaar was a great step away from reference, and this book is another worthy diversion from the Java section of the bookstore. This first portion of the book provides a lightheartedly written history of the art of programming and puts it into perspective in the wider realm of disciplines. The latter section of the book concentrates on technology and promotes both the author's programming language and spam filtering technologies.

Anyone who is passionate about creating software and programming will find things to like about this book. If programming is just a day job you probably won't be interested in what's here, which is unfortunate. Of course, being passionate about the art of programming I liked this book a lot and highly recommend it.

Paul Graham has delivered final proof that he is a marvelous essayist with his volume of fairly diverse writings, Hackers & Painters. I first came across his writing with his article, "A Plan For Spam," on using Bayesian filtering to block spam and found it a well written and informative technical article. I next came across him some time later when he wrote an essay on his web site entitled "Hackers & Painters," and once again it was well written, informative and (more importantly for an essayist) thought provoking. I was excited to hear he had published a volume of writing and pleased with the copy I received.

Literature has a long history of the essayist; since those famous theses on the church door at Wittenberg a well written and thought provoking essay on a topic has provided power and focus for important discussions. Graham has either learnt or discovered the important points in writing a good essay; brevity, quality writing and thought.

In this volume Graham covers a range of topics, though all are, understandably, centered on computers. Why nerds are unpopular at school, and what this demonstrates about our eduction system; why program in Lisp; the importance of "startups", programming languages and web development are all touched on. At the same time he covers topics less techno-centric such as heretical thinking and speech. wealth creation and unequal income distribution.

I found myself disagreeing with him often while reading the book, though every time I did I found his argument compelling. I agree with Andy Hertzfeld, quoted on the back cover of the book, "He may even make you want to start programming in Lisp." Graham is politically more conservative and right wing than me, he is also a fervent supporter of Lisp, while I'm a C and Perl advocate. It is telling that at no time did I find myself railing at his views, rather I was reading his arguments and giving them meme space. A good sign of a writer that does not indulge in unnecessary or extreme polemic.

Graham also tends to concentrate on a single point in each essay, allowing for both good coverage and a brief essay. Where he covers a larger context, such as high school education in "Why Nerds Are Unpopular" that opens the book, he seems to focus on just one or two good points of discussion.

The title essay is the second in the collection and provides an interesting look at hacking and some lessons we can learn by analogy to the work and life of Rennaissance painters, particularly in how it is done and how it can be funded. The third, "What You Can't Say" is social commentary on heretical thinking. Four, "Good Bad Attitude" is on the benefits of breaking rules, both in life and hacking. Five, "The Other Road Ahead", is an excellent look at web based software and why it offers benefits to both user and developer with Graham examining some lessons he learnt while building ViaWeb. Six, "How To Make Wealth", is a look at becoming wealthy and how a 'startup' might be the best way to do it. The seventh, "Mind The Gap", is an argument that we should not worry so much about 'unequal wealth distribution' and why it might actually be a good thing. From this list, and a look at the table of contents (available as a PDF on the O'Reilly page for the book), you can see that Graham covers a wide spectrum while never straying from topics he knows.

If I was forced to identify a weakness in this book it may well be that Graham does not evince doubt or uncertainty in his arguments, on a few occasions he may admit to a narrow view or knowledge but doubt or uncertainty don't seem to enter his field of vision while he writes. This coupled with a single viewpoint makes the book less than all-encompassing in discussion. However, I must admit that it is almost impossible to be anything more with a single author and Graham may well be more honest than others who pick and choose the alternatives they present.

Most of the essays are available at Graham's website, but frankly I am a fan of dead trees and appreciated that this book could be read on the bus or in bed. If you would prefer something you can read on the bus then a PDF of the second chapter, "Hackers & Painters" is available from the O'Reilly page.

I would recommend this book to anyone who wants to think about a number of topics important to the culture of our tiny corner of the world, computers and the net, while not ignoring the rest.

If i wanted biased rants on common knowledge topics i could have spoken to my local bar man for the price of a pint, and might have even gotten a joke for free. What a waste of money.

For you to say Java is not a good language and not a choice of hackers is total BS. Maybe you hang around a different group of hackers but Java pwnz. And this book, please. POS.

This is one of the most insightful books that I've ever read. I happened to be a programmer, but maybe even enjoyed his insights on life, society, schools, and business as much if not more than the technical aspects.

A friend of mine introduced me to this book and I am glad that he did. While I am not a programmer and, as a result, got lost a couple of times in the essays, "Beating the Averages" and "The Dream Language", I wholeheartedly recommend this book.

It clearly and crisply explains the art and science of programming and where it fits into a larger historical and social context. It also provides many thought-provoking insights for technical and non-technical folks alike.

You can see in Graham's writing style his passion for simple, succinct prose as well as code. It was a very pleasurable read.

Hello Paul,
I read your essays "Hackers and Painters" and "Taste for
Makers", and I find them GREAT, even if many months later
the first publication.

I searched the Internet since 1995+ for texts like yours,
but I was able to find *zero* occurrencies of the big
evidence: painters and hackers share common traits.

Of course, they are akin not in the foolish sense that one
can write a program to display some pixels at random or
fixed positions.
Instead, painters and hackers are equals in taste, design,
and skecthing.

I studied painting at Accademia di Belle Arti in Milan, but
I thinker with computers since I was 12, I started with an
Apple IIe clone built by my brother (when he was 18) using
a do-it-yourself kit.
Now I work as a "corporate drone" programmer in Milan.

That's why when I read your essays I was so impressed:
I am not smart enough to be a "real hacker," AND I am not
good enough to be a famous painter, but today this Middle
Land seems to me no longer too much strange.

Thanks Paul,
Claudio Destro

PS:
To be a painter or to be an hacker, that's the question.

I really need to stress the fact that I am really split in
two personalities (as seen from the outside, of course.)
In fact, when I was 14~15, I was really stucked (for about
two years) on the following (in)decision: to study fine
arts or to study information technology?

Did I choose correctly? The fact that now I am a "corporate
drone" programmer makes me think "No, I did not choose
correctly." Indeed, the fact that you, a _real_ computer
scientist, wrote such essays, makes me think that at least
I was right.

Every so often a book comes along that blows the cobwebs out of some dark corner of my mind. "The Naked Ape", "Sperm Wars", "Guns, Germs, and Steel", and "The Mating Mind" for example;
each in its own way exhibiting our favorite species as a very different critter from the one we gawk at in the mirror.

I got a similar feeling reading the first third of "Hackers and Painters", reading about the prisons we call schools.and the nursuries we call suburbia.

The discussion of economics contains fewer original ideas, but explains clearly some things that every educated person needs to understand, but maybe nobody ever told you. The first half of the book will make fun reading for your active mind.

You have to be a hacker yourself to want to read the second half. At this point the purpose of the book is revealed - subtle ad copy for a new computer language called "arc". The first half are the apologia ( well, prologia ) justifying the audacity of saying out loud that for some purposes, lisp might be a better language than cobol, and forefending the dreaded charge of hate speech.

This is not, however, the endless Holy War between the acolytes of vi and emacs, which was once quashed with "editors, what editors, when I program I just type into the standard input of the compiler".

There's some tantalizing evidence that he's right.

I once got into a discussion with a very bright logician about the nature of mathematics. He was arguing that mathematics is the same thing as set theory, I was arguing that mathematics is the study of interesting axiomatic systems. In some sense it's a stupid argument - one of definitions. In another it's a tribal war over intellectual territory. But it's also possible that it goes to the nature of things in some intrinsic way. From the experience of the last nearly two decades, we can't settle that debate. I don't know if I was right or wrong, or even how meaningful the question was. But we do know now that mathematics is much more than set theory - the theory of topoi, which arose historically from algebraic topology, via category theory and algebraic geometry, subsumes set theory, and is by now clearly a more appropriate foundation for mathematics.

Now that we know that the typed lambda calculi of computational theory are precisely the same objects as the topoi of mathematical category theory, we have the curious coincidence tha t a central foundational notion of logic is identical to the central foundational notion of mathematics. When you get to the same rich ideas from multiple directions, particularly when the roads remember centuries of hard travel, it's time to sit up and pay attention.The last time this happened on that kind of scale, Descartes ushered in the scientific era.

It's probably not outrageous to suggest that a language which has the expressive power of this intellectual Rome could be more useful than one that does not - a suggestion made with intelligence, insight, and expensive anecdotal evidence.

Time for me to get serious about lisp

This is an astonishingly good collection of essays. In lesser hands, any of the 15 essays here could have been a book by itself --- each packs more content than you can find in a typical one idea business book, or a typical one technology book for geeks. Yet his book is not dense or difficult: Graham's graceful style is a pleasure to read.

But what is it? Is it a business book, or a technical book? A bit of both actually, with a pinch of social criticism thrown in. There are essays on business --- particularly startups --- and essays on programming languages and how to combat spam, and one delightful one on the difficulty being a nerd in American public schools.

My favorite essay of the 15 --- and picking a favorite is itself a challenge --- is called "What you can't say". It is about heresy, not historical Middle Ages burned-at-the-stake heresy, but heresy today in 2004. And if you believe nothing is heretical today, that no idea today is so beyond the pale that it would provoke a purely emotional reaction to its very utterance, then read some of the other reviews. Graham's idea is not that all heresies are worth challenging publicly, or even that all heresies are wrong, but merely that there is value is being aware of what is heretical, so one can notice where the blind spots are.

Astonishingly good.

Paul Graham is a real genius who will only receive full recognition for his work very late, like the (now) famous people he talks of in his book. Rarely have I been enlightened on so many points, many of which are extremely subtle, in such a short time. I read rather a lot, but I have yet to come across an author who shares the fruit of his thinking so purely - I fully buy into the otherwise suspicious claim of pure curiosity as motivation.

Please keep writing, Paul!

I have been reading Paul Graham's articles ever since he popped up on Slashdot a couple of years back. I was so excited to hear about the book, that I pre-ordered without waiting for the local edition that is 3-4x cheaper. I don't believe in objective reviews and ,strongly recommend this book to any above average nerd-types who have been suffering in silence in corporate software development environments. If you are deeply puzzled/frustrated with middle management, kool-aid languages/technology,etc., this book will provide you with deep insights into why things are the way they are.

The book is chockful of ideas and hints for getting out the nightmare, that a lot of dev groups are/have turned into. Start your own company , he says ! Why ? Because only in startups do measurability and leverage both ensure that you get what you are worth. In the typical corporate dev environment judging a person's worth or something more tangible like, contributions to specific projects is next to impossible for the typical IT manager. It doesn't matter how hard you work, since the average middle manager cannot measure your contribution. Forget leverage in large groups - you can do very little to alter the course of events in your dept. A few quotes from "How to make wealth" :

*'To get rich you need to get yourself in a situation with two things, measurement and leverage.You need to be in a position where your performance can be measured, or there is no way to get paid more by doing more. And you have to have leverage, in the sense that decisions you make have a big effect'
*'Smallness = Measurement'
* 'Technology = Leverage'
* 'Economically you can think of a startup as a way to compress your whole working life into a few years. Instead of working at a low intensity for forty years, you work as hard as you possibly can for four. This pays well in technology, where you can earn a premium for working fast.'

This book is not crassly materialistic or anything of that sort - except for the chapters "How To make wealth", "Mind the Gap", and "Programming Languages explained" the other chapters are available on the author's website, and that covers a whole range of topics from LISP, the advantages of web based software, Design, etc.

The author does appear to paint with broad brush at times, but the book is overwhelmingly full of fresh insights ,and I think all the negative reviews are missing the wood for the trees.

Nerds will like the book, even if they feel defensive or irritated by Graham's comments that hit too close to home.

Hypersensitive types (pedants, "experts") should avoid the book -- Graham will gore your sacred cow, and the fact that such an insolent non-expert has cashed out with many millions will bother you. You'd best read something else.

If you are a programmer (who doesn't hack lisp), the book may really make you wonder. You may think that your favorite language is the best -- but do you really have enough experience to back it up?

Graham knows the languages you know. He chooses lisp. He and two other programmers built a $49 million company in 3 years. In the same time period, you didn't. In the "Fantasy Football" sense, you got whupped.

If this intrigues you, check out "On Lisp" (avail free online), by the same author, as it illustrates those things that a lisp master can do that you cannot.

Paul Graham is an interesting character. He is both an outstanding hacker -- he created the software that became the foundation for Yahoo's shopping site and was an early advocate for Bayesian spam-filtering -- and an artistic painter. Mr. Graham sees no contradiction in all of this -- in fact he considers hacking and art to be nearly synonymous; hence, the title for this book (and an essay contained in the book).

*Hackers and Painters* is an anthology of some of Paul Graham's more provocative essays and lectures. The essays range from exploring the anthropology/sociology of hacking -- nerds (who as an earlier reviewer pointed out are unpopular) and the select of group of computer enthusiasts known as 'hackers.' The book also has his essays advocating the use of Lisp and Bayesian spam-filtering. The book also contains essays that can be considered social commentary (about academics, etc.).

I do NOT agree with all of what Paul Graham has to say. I do not think that Lisp is as useful a language as Paul Graham claims it to be. I don't appreciate his disparaging of concepts (and people) contrary to his own (e.g., bashing Perl, uncharitable remarks about computer scientists and mathematicians, etc.) Some of his social commentary seem ill informed or naive.

BUT -- in spite of all of that -- Paul Graham's essays are well worth reading. Where I do AGREE with him, I really appreciate his insights. I'm a big fan of his essay "Why nerds are unpopular" (contained in this book). With some reservations, I also admire his essays "Hackers and Painters" and essays on Bayesian spam-filtering.

Paul Graham is a great writer. If he wasn't so successful with programming in Lisp, he could have become just as successful with writing in the English language. Although his interest in writing is somewhat secondary to his many other interests, Paul Graham is extraordinary gifted in this arena as well. It's refreshing to see that -- contrary to stereotypes -- a hacker can be both a gifted artist and writer.

As for the complaint about Paul Graham's alleged disparaging of French lit PhDs. Frankly, I have heard many humanities types openly and crassly referring to scientist/engineering/technical types as idiots or worse, and vice versa. While I don't agree with chauvanism by left-brainers, make no mistake, right-brainers are also capable of narrow-minded snobbery as well. (BTW, what does comparing Paul Graham to some comedian have to do with anything? I prefer "unpopular nerds" like Paul to morons like the other reviewer from L.A.)