Rarely-Asked Questions (2006)
paulgraham.com
paulgraham.com
I have given away many copies of Hackers and Painters and have forwarded many more pdf copies of it (pirated, sorry, but for a good cause) due to exactly the same reason that Gideons place their book in hotel rooms or YW's give away their "literature": I was trying to convert people to his way of objective, no holds barred, minimalist way of thinking/writing. Unfortunately, his approach has been equated by many to the "SV hacker types have an answer to all world's great problems and they're all wrong and naive" school of thought, the belittlement and maligning of which is very much in vogue nowadays.
But these people miss the point. pg is interesting precisely because he was (is?) so different from mainstream SV thinking (compare&contrast sama's writings and his essays, not saying one is better but they are quite different). Read his essay "What You cannot Say" (http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html) as an antidote to current hysterical state of thought, "What You'll Wish You'd Known" (http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html) should be required for all high school students around the world trying to shape their lives.
Hero worship from a founder-wannabe? Perhaps. Read the essays yourself and find out.
I'm sure he hasn't run out of ideas and wouldn't mind sharing them if there was less screaming in response to them.
It could still be moderated to filter the trolls with means, but I haven't run across too many people who are willing to contribute 24 bucks a year in order to scream at someone else online.
Maybe a scheme like Pinboard, where each user raises the cost in a small way as a selective pressure for handling user growth.
But I could be deluded. I believe his ideas and content are worth far more than the prices I mentioned, but if he'd give them away, why not to folks who are willing to put some skin in the game?
For me, he's one of the few writers online where I'd pay for consistent thought pieces.
Since you're familiar with the namesake of the following question (or vice versa) could you explain this RAQ?
"Why don't more painters have hacking jobs?"
I don't get it. These questions seem similar: Why don't more hackers have milking cattle jobs? Why don't more painters have doctoring jobs?
Clearly I'm missing something!
"When I finished grad school in computer science I went to art school to study painting. A lot of people seemed surprised that someone interested in computers would also be interested in painting. They seemed to think that hacking and painting were very different kinds of work—that hacking was cold, precise, and methodical, and that painting was the frenzied expression of some primal urge."
There are many jobs, some that pay quite well, that don't make things, I think your two examples fall into this general category.
Just point out that in "A Plan for Spam" he demonstrably solved one of the world's great problems.
I think his point #1 is what was good for Paul Graham, rather than what makes a good teacher. Some teachers would try single me out for my lack of work ethic, & it would further disengage me. I learnt better from who would expose us to ideas, & then leave us to our own devices, play makes for good learning, & play must be voluntary. The teacher I respected most taught both Physics & Programming in my senior years ( https://ca.ratemyteachers.com/michael-harwood/579411-t ). He didn't have high standards. Which meant I was free to explore whatever I felt like, building pyramids out of rulers, playing chess, reading about random programming languages. Still keep in touch with him. I liked teachers who would go off on tangents during a lecture. Whereas I had to drop Data Management & Probability when the teacher wouldn't allow me to read in class
As for #2, there was a biology teacher who was a good teacher, very passionate, very much meets #1 & #3, but he broke a ruler while smacking it on a desk in rage, & he would tell us we all needed to be beaten like the Chinese: https://ca.ratemyteachers.com/bela-nagy/452449-t
It's less true when he's writing about broader topics like "how to be a good teacher" or "how can we solve economic inequality across all of society."
> The pointy-haired boss is a manager who doesn't program. So the surest way to avoid becoming him is to stay a programmer.
Staying a programmer is a good way to avoid becoming a pointy-haired boss, but I’ve seen many programmers become pointy-haired bosses even as they continue to write code. The most common way good people become bad bosses is to blame people for their mistakes, because they’re nervous about the commitments they make and don’t know how to leave themselves enough options. The closer you are to the code, the less likely you are to suffer from this prolem (but it still happens).
Jenny Greene and I wrote about this in Learning Agile: https://twitter.com/AndrewStellman/status/971810876830502912
Write an application big enough that you can make the lower levels into a language layer. Embedded languages (or as they now seem to be called, DSLs) are the essence of Lisp hacking.
When I think about Clojure, the "layers of languages" metaphor doesn't spring to mind.
Can anyone familiar with the language describe how well the metaphor holds for it? Also, is there a difference in how well it holds for how Clojure is presented and used in practice, vs. what's technically possible in the language?
You certainly can use macros to build DSLs in Clojure (the Midje and Korma libraries make heavy use for them, for example). But over-heavy use of macros is discouraged when common library functions operating on simple data structures will do.
For a very different approach which feels much more aligned w/ PG's comment, have a look at Norvig's "Paradigms of AI Programming: Case Studies in Common Lisp." Reading it changed my notion of what Lisp is / can be; you can write Clojure programs that look similar, but it seems to be rare to do so.
The "philosophy is proto-versions of everything else" schtick is such a confused, petulant view.
Research academic analytic philosophy as practiced in contemporary universities at post-grad level, as published in journals, has nothing to do with the "philosophy" of history which meant any "thinking systematically".
(Imagine "physics" being held to account for artistotle's Physics!)
Research philosophy is metacogition, ie., the application of concepts-about-concepts to whichever concepts are of interest to a given philosopher: everything from programming to physics to art.
This isnt a proto-version or a degraded version or anyhting. Its an enitrely different discipline. Physicists do not regard cycling has some "proto" version of classical physics.
The employing of domain concepts is different to employing metacognative concepts to that domain. The latter is a whole field of independent research with its own goals, criteria, method.
> Research academic analytic philosophy as practiced in contemporary universities at post-grad level, as published in journals, has nothing to do with the "philosophy" of history which meant any "thinking systematically".
If post-grad philosophy is so thoroughly different from what is taught as "philosophy" in undergrad, it would behove them to use a different name.
A general way to consider the difference between undergrad and post-grad flavors of an academic discipline is that undergrad is primarily about learning how to apply what is known, while post-grad is primarily about exploring the unknown to create new knowledge.
These are very different mindsets; it's one reason that so many successful undergrads with great grades never make it to Ph.D. or beyond.
> A general way to consider the difference between undergrad and post-grad flavors of an academic discipline is that undergrad is primarily about learning how to apply what is known, while post-grad is primarily about exploring the unknown to create new knowledge.
The practice of researching physics is very different from the practice of teaching physics, sure. But it's the same "physics"; graduate physicists would be happy for their discipline to be judged by undergraduate physics (and undergraduate philosophy does include Aristotle, Aquinas and all that).
If someone told you that they are a professional physicist and you said "oh, so you time pendulums and drop various objects from heights and build simple circuits," (common in undergrad physics labs) they would probably look at you funny.
Undergrads simply don't have the math to do "real" physics.
Even Feynman couldn't change that. He tried to build an intro to physics course around "real" physics, starting with the electron, but he ultimately judged his effort a failure.
Pointers to respected books, sites, programs would be appreciated.
And I have seen at least one proponent of continental philosophy state that contemporary French philosophers strive to sound impressive, rather than to be clear. That's... not going to be optimal at producing insight.
That's like saying "there's more to banks than just places you put money, they also line the edges of rivers!".
The term "philosophy" is polysemous, and refers to distinct methodologies/areas.
Continental philosophy has a more literary methodology and has very differnt concerns. On the whole, the methodological assumption behind the whole activity is that phenomenology is the horizon of study. Ie., it denies the causal origin of experience.
You might call this a "radically specialized area of the general activity of PHILOSOPHY with peculiar methodology". Equally, that would apply to any discipline whatsoever. Equally, physics meets such criteria.
In this sense then continental philosophy is not at all philosophy in the sense i mean. Nor is popular philosophy. Self-help books. "Metaphysics" as meant by crystal weilding "spirituals". All this is a reuse of the term.
One may as well as a al-chemist for help with chemistry.