Hackers and Painters

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Hackers and Painters

Upon feeling the fatigue of reading numerous .NETintroductory texts, I was pleasantly surprised when O'Reilly sent me PaulGraham's Hackers and Painters bookfor review. Paul is one of the shining stars of the Internet gold rush who hadcashed out at that most opportune time. He has written a book about his viewson programming and how technology mingles with business and society in general.After reading the enthusiastic quotes of industry luminaries on the back coverwrap praising Paul's work, I had high expectations that the title contained atreasure trove of great ideas and a roadmap to success. Besides Paul'sassertion that hacking, like painting, is more art than science, his bookreiterates two main points: work harder than your competitor, and program inLisp.

The book is essentially a collection of essays that havebeen reprinted from Paul's Web site (http://www.paulgraham.com)with a few that were written exclusively for the book. Visit his Web site toget an idea of what his writing style and motivations are, and you will seethat a majority of his reference circles around his success at growing andselling his company, Viaweb, to Yahoo. Although that's fine on the surface, Iwish Paul could have gone deeper into what really happened. Does he believethat he could have had just as much success in 2004 compared to thefree-flowing cash during the dot com heyday? If not, what are more realisticexpectations, given his experience having lived through The Bubble? What impactdid the overt dedication to his company have on his personal life? Keep in mindthat this is Paul's book; as such, it's very opinionated, political at times,and intentionally agitating. Little space is given to debate or counterpointhis position. Essentially, this book is Paul's printed blog. As such, he hassome sweet analogies and definitions suitable for quoting, such as, "A startupis like a mosquito," and the term 'industry practice' roughly means "don't doanything weird."

Beyond these critiques, the book is entertaining from thestandpoint of relating to its contents. The first chapter, "Why Nerds AreUnpopular" will stir up memories and associations with many of the book'sintended audience. "The Other Road Ahead" argues why server-based software andApplication Service Providers (ASPs) will overcome client-side packages as thedominant way to make money in the software business. The second half of thebook leads up to why the Lisp programming language trumps all others, and whyPaul is spending his time creating a language superior to Lisp that he callsArc. Besides the name, not much else is disclosed about Arc, and there are nobits to play with as of yet. Interested parties can request to be notified whensomething's ready to be shown by sending an e-mail to mailto:[email protected].

Overall, the book was a nice temporary diversion from thetechnical books I normally review. Although I don't agree with some of theviews that Paul presents, that's the nature of diverse opinion and a welcomechange from the mass media packaging of press release markitecture found inother technical essays and white papers these days.

- Mike Riley

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Title: Hackers and Painters

Authors: Paul Graham

Publisher: O'Reilly & Associates

ISBN: 0-596-00662-4

BookWeb Site: http://www.oreilly.com/catalog/hackpaint

Price: US$22.95

PageCount: 271 pages