View Larger Image	Paul Graham O'Reilly Media, Hardcover, Published May 2004, 258 pages, ISBN 0596006624
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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."

Eric S. Raymond, author of The Cathedral and the Bazaar, writes in the foreword to Hackers & Painters:
"Paul's writing is, as you'll soon learn from the rest of this book, wonderfully lucid stuff. Reading Paul's essays is like having a conversation with a genius who doesn't need to score any points by proving it to you, except that most geniuses aren't as articulate as he is. You get to share Paul's sense that the Universe is a fascinating place, and his knack for looking at it from an unusual angle."
 

Table of Contents

1. Why Nerds Are Unpopular
Their minds are not on the game.

2. Hackers and Painters
Hackers are makers, like painters or architects or writers.

3. What You Can’t Say
How to think heretical thoughts and what to do with them.

4. Good Bad Attitude
Like Americans, hackers win by breaking rules.

5. The Other Road Ahead
Web-based software offers the biggest opportunity since the
arrival of the microcomputer.

6. How to Make Wealth
The best way to get rich is to create wealth. And startups are
the best way to do that.

7. Mind the Gap
Could “unequal income distribution” be less of a problem
than we think?

8. A Plan for Spam
Till recently most experts thought spam filtering wouldn’t
work. This proposal changed their minds.

9. Taste for Makers
How do you make great things?

 10. Programming Languages Explained
What a programming language is and why they are a hot
topic now.

11. The Hundred-Year Language
How will we program in a hundred years? Why not
start now?

12. Beating the Averages
For web-based applications you can use whatever language
you want. So can your competitors.

13. Revenge of the Nerds
In technology, “industry best practice” is a recipe for losing.

14. The Dream Language
A good programming language is one that lets hackers have
their way with it.

15. Design and Research
Research has to be original. Design has to be good.
notes

acknowledgments

 image credits

 glossary

index
 
 

About the Author

Paul Graham, designer of the new Arc language, was the creator of Yahoo Store, the first web-based application. His technique for spam filtering inspired most current filters. He has a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard and studied painting at RISD and the Accademia in Florence.

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