Paul Graham is Braindead
kohari.org
kohari.org
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While Mac may not win in the long run, Windows sure as hell is on the way to the land of nostalgia. It'll still be around, and people will still use it and depend on it, but they won't like it -- just like COBOL. I'd be pretty unhappy if my checks stopped clearing because all the COBOL programmers maintaining IBM 360s suddenly vanished.
"Paul Graham is Braindead (April 2007)" or something.
This guy's post is barely coherent and shorter than many comments on this site.
"id Software has set up a second development team - and its first project is likely to raise some eyebrows.
"That group has begun by working on a web-browser-based version of the developer's popular Quake 3 Arena first-person shooter, Quake Zero, which will be funded by advertising."
If so, that's just a testament to the fact that the JVM has become fairly decent in the last several years.
PG focuses simply on product development I focus on product development with obvious monetization, which for some reason I call 'marketing.' If you have a product which cannot obviously be monetizatized, you should not quit your day job. Therefore, PG is 'hurting the children' by encouraging people to spend time developing products which may not be easily monetized.
An even more concise summary:
Don't put any effort into anything unless you are sure you can make money off of it. Altruism is stupid. PG believes in altruistic behavior, therefore he is stupid.
Not sure you've come to the correct conclusion in your analysis.
Graham has defined YC as "a hack to make money". Elsewhere in YC's site (it used to be on the FAQ) it talks about being benevolent, but "not a charity".
So, yes, any investor is looking to make a profit.
And so, you do need to think about whether or not your product can be profitable (even YC's application asks this question).
In my charitable estimation, PG's "Not a charity" statement means that YC is not in the business of giving out financial handouts. It does not mean that PG's first or only motive is pecuniary benefit.
We live in a culture defined by the worship of the Almighty dollar. If PG is at least hinting in a different direction, I'd say that's a good thing.
We're hoping that 5 or 10 years from now, it will be a normal thing for the most ambitious hackers to start startups instead of going to work for big companies. We think that will make hackerdom as a whole dramatically more productive.
If that comes to pass and we were among the leading agents of the change, it seems reasonable that we might make a lot of money from it. But we don't have any idea how much.
In the short term we have to make at least enough to cover our expenses, because otherwise we'd run out of money and have to stop doing this.
First off, the title is obviously not meant to indicate that Paul Graham is, in fact, braindead. In reality, I respect Paul immensely, and it was for this fact that I felt strongly enough that I had to comment. As for the title, I was simply matching one sensationalist title with another. (Note that the title of neither article was actually representative of its real argument.)
Secondly, although many wish it (sometimes myself included), Microsoft is not dead nor dying. My core argument is that if Paul wanted to say that entrepreneurs shouldn't fear Microsoft, then so be it; his point would have been much stronger and well-stated. I also would have agreed with him... no one should be afraid of Microsoft, they're just a company.
Instead, he said things like "no one uses Windows" and "everyone can see the desktop is over" and completely undermined his own credibility.
Anyhow, as I said in another comment, it was just meant as a rant, and I'm surprised the post has gotten as much interest as it has. I still stand by what I said, but I probably could have toned down the sensationalism a bit. :)
Thanks for visiting and commenting; it's very good to get the opposing view. I wish you could have read the 30-odd comments that were left, most in agreement, before I switched back to Wordpress and nuked them... :/
Perhaps that happens if you write about any super controversial topic, no matter what conclusion you draw.
As such, even though PG would never penalize users for upvoting critical articles, I'm guessing there are some users that are paranoid anyways and playing it safe.