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54 reviews for:
Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age
Paul Graham, Allen Noren, Matt Hutchinson
3.79 AVERAGE
54 reviews for:
Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age
Paul Graham, Allen Noren, Matt Hutchinson
3.79 AVERAGE
Entertaining and at times quite nerdy. The best sections are about startups. Almost evangelical about Lisp when he gets on to programming languages.
Often after I read a book I think about what it would be like to meet the author and talk about the book with him or her. I have no desire to meet Paul Graham. He sounds so arrogant and pontificates so much about things he really doesn't know much about that I can't imagine talking to him. I agree with David's review below.
The book is structured in a chapter as independent lectures style (or more accurately chapters made from previously given lectures). Because of that, it feels unfair to review the book as a whole when really I should review each chapter. But overall there were a lot of interesting thoughts and predictions (some of which because the book is old we've already seen come to pass) and I'd recommend it highly to anyone interested in the tech world.
Intriguing, and hilarious. Very honest. A lot to be learned.
challenging
informative
lighthearted
medium-paced
This was okay. Maybe it's because I often disagreed with the author's personal viewpoint but I thought this book served as a way to talk about how great he is and why he's always right.
I will say there was some useful information I was able to glean from it about programming.
Wouldn't read again.
I will say there was some useful information I was able to glean from it about programming.
Wouldn't read again.
If you can get past his ego, Paul Graham has an interesting perspective that's useful to understand in the world of software. You can, however, also read most of this for free on his blog.
This is a book of essays that Paul Graham wrote about creating the company ViaWeb that eventually became YahooStores. He was part of the team that created one of the first online stores. Graham always writes with a lot of clarity. But we really do not need yet another book that mentions Bill Gates and Steve Jobs when discussing tech entrepreneurs. That ground has been so thoroughly covered that the grass has shriveled up and died already. The chapter "Mind the Gap" about how wealth disparity is a good thing that encourages entrepreneurs to work really hard for a short period of time to acquire all their wealth is another thing that can only be written by someone who is not experiencing food scarcity. Wealth disparity can encourage entrepreneurship up to a point. When it comes to whether someone needs $100 million or a $1 billion to be motivated, it really does not matter to people who generally have much less than that.
This is the dumbest book written by the dumbest guy.