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![Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age by [Paul Graham]](https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/510MQ9+tuRL._SY346_.jpg)
Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age 1st Edition, Kindle Edition
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"The computer world is like an intellectual Wild West, in which you can shoot anyone you wish with your ideas, if you're willing to risk the consequences. " --from Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age, by Paul Graham
We are living in the computer age, in a world increasingly designed and engineered by computer programmers and software designers, by people who call themselves hackers. Who are these people, what motivates them, and why should you care?
Consider these facts: Everything around us is turning into computers. Your typewriter is gone, replaced by a computer. Your phone has turned into a computer. So has your camera. Soon your TV will. Your car was not only designed on computers, but has more processing power in it than a room-sized mainframe did in 1970. Letters, encyclopedias, newspapers, and even your local store are being replaced by the Internet.
Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age, by Paul Graham, explains this world and the motivations of the people who occupy it. In clear, thoughtful prose that draws on illuminating historical examples, Graham takes readers on an unflinching exploration into what he calls "an intellectual Wild West."
The ideas discussed in this book will have a powerful and lasting impact on how we think, how we work, how we develop technology, and how we live. Topics include the importance of beauty in software design, how to make wealth, heresy and free speech, the programming language renaissance, the open-source movement, digital design, internet startups, and more.
- ISBN-13978-0596006624
- Edition1st
- PublisherO'Reilly Media
- Publication date18 May 2004
- LanguageEnglish
- File size1938 KB
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Product description
About the Author
Paul Graham , designer of the new Arc language, was the creator of Yahoo Store, the first web-based application. His technique for spam filtering inspired most current filters. He has a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard and studied painting at RISD and the Accademia in Florence.
--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.Product details
- ASIN : B0026OR2NQ
- Publisher : O'Reilly Media; 1st edition (18 May 2004)
- Language : English
- File size : 1938 KB
- Simultaneous device usage : Unlimited
- Text-to-Speech : Enabled
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Not Enabled
- Print length : 253 pages
- Best Sellers Rank: 319,626 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- 31 in Linux
- 36 in Algorithms Programming
- 38 in Computer Algorithms Textbooks
- Customer Reviews:
About the author

Paul Graham (born 13 November 1964) is an English computer scientist, venture capitalist, and essayist. He is known for his work on Lisp, for co-founding Viaweb (which eventually became Yahoo! Store), and for co-founding the Y Combinator seed capital firm. He is the author of some programming books, such as: On Lisp (1993), ANSI Common Lisp (1995), and Hackers & Painters (2004).
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by Crédit photo: Sarah Harlin [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons.
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If you're a fan of his writing then this is definitely worth picking up.
It's always great to read about PG's thoughts surrounding start-ups and what he learned when he started Viaweb.


When he confines himself to start-ups and programming he makes a lot of good points. He's undoubtedly an excellent programmer and his thoughts on start-ups and lisp (mainly) are interesting and backed up by experience. His essays on why nerds re unpopular is excellent.
However on essays such as `How to make Wealth' and `Mind the Gap' he demonstrates the shallowness of his thinking. His politics are libertarian, and he repeatedly justifies the idea that inequality doesn't matter and that the rich earn their money. Both of these are debatable at best, and he makes various howlers - such as the amount of dollars the US government creates has a top limit, programmers tend to be libertarians (maybe in the US but I've ever met one in Britain) etc. He has a point when he says differences in productivity should give rise to differences in wealth but it's very hard to believe that's what's happening in the top 1% of income.
So as long as you ignore this, it's an interesting read, note also that all of these essays are free on PG's website.

Se você é programador, LEIA, provavelmente vai ser seu livro favorito.


Reviewed in Brazil on 8 September 2020
Se você é programador, LEIA, provavelmente vai ser seu livro favorito.


You can get really interesting philosophical smell from this writing.
The autor really loves what he does and gives you real high level knowledge from his vast and deep experience in computing.
Really good for picking chapters in a random manner.
I loved reading it.