By Paul Graham, finished Wednesday 3 September 2008
Paul Graham is known for several things: as a founder of Viaweb, the online shop software bought by Yahoo!; as a Lisp developer and language designer; as a founder of startup incubator Y Combinator; and, to many more people, as an essayist on the art of computer programming.
Hackers & Painters is, in the main, culled from Graham’s back catalogue of articles, and many of them are available online. Nevertheless, the convenience and aesthetic value of a physical copy is not to be underestimated, and Hackers & Painters is far from a typical O'Reilly book in this respect. The copy is well typeset, and while the cover doesn’t quite live up to its content, it does include a decent enough reproduction of Bruegel’s Tower of Babel.
One particular improvement to the online versions is the inclusion of pictures; even for someone who gets the majority of Graham’s artistic references, there’s a distinct advantage to having a reproduction of the painting in question right there on the page, even in black and white.
When writing on language design, Lisp and startups, Graham is authoritative and writes with clarity, sharpness and candour. While there’s no denying the keenness of his observations, his amateur sociology lacks in comparison. Nevertheless, this is a book full of valuable insights, and I would recommend it to anyone involved or interested in computer programming.
Paul Graham is known for several things: as a founder of Viaweb, the online shop software bought by Yahoo!; as a Lisp developer and language designer; as a founder of startup incubator Y Combinator; and, to many more people, as an essayist on the art of computer programming.
Hackers & Painters is, in the main, culled from Graham’s back catalogue of articles, and many of them are available online. Nevertheless, the convenience and aesthetic value of a physical copy is not to be underestimated, and Hackers & Painters is far from a typical O'Reilly book in this respect. The copy is well typeset, and while the cover doesn’t quite live up to its content, it does include a decent enough reproduction of Bruegel’s Tower of Babel.
One particular improvement to the online versions is the inclusion of pictures; even for someone who gets the majority of Graham’s artistic references, there’s a distinct advantage to having a reproduction of the painting in question right there on the page, even in black and white.
When writing on language design, Lisp and startups, Graham is authoritative and writes with clarity, sharpness and candour. While there’s no denying the keenness of his observations, his amateur sociology lacks in comparison. Nevertheless, this is a book full of valuable insights, and I would recommend it to anyone involved or interested in computer programming.