PG's Rarely Asked Questions

http://www.paulgraham.com/raq.html

by wallawe • 15 years ago

299 213 15 years ago

Interesting, now that I think of it, I have never met someone (except pg) who is a painter and programmer. I've met several programmers who are writers, musicians, carpenters, etc, but never painters.

I draw cartoons/caricatures (examples here: http://www.smileecards.com) and have painted a few times, but I don't quite call myself a painter.

About teachers, I totally agree that good teachers earn the respect of the students by having high standard, calling students out on bad quality work. I once suspected a teacher only read the beginning and the end of essays, so I submitted a 4 page essay that contained a recipe for banana cake in the second and third pages; I received a B+!

_delirium2• 15 years ago

Harold Cohen is probably the most famous example--- a painter who also programs AI systems (which are themselves painters...): http://crca.ucsd.edu/~hcohen/

Although, looking for painters who are also programmers, but programmers of things other than computer-art systems is also an interesting question. Likewise with musicians, people who are musician-programmers in computer music, and people who are musicians and also programmers separately, might be interesting to consider as different groups.

yannis• 15 years ago

I am a Mech Engineer with a passion for programming. I used to paint when I was a kid, but that was a long time ago. Now what I find interesting is that without having read the PG article, I tell people that I program using the water-color technique. I 'sketch' quickly the code and then go back and fill the 'colors' the small refinements for completion and over write a little bit. Now I know other people they code like Architects, have master plans draw out all the details and then code, perhaps Djikstra was one of them and then there are the oil painters (possibly Knuth's style). Reminds me of Michelangelo where he had a great vision but had a lot of assistants to fill some parts (think of all the Ph D students slaving away).

RodgerTheGreat• 15 years ago

I'm a programmer and an artist- my art is mostly done in traditional media like ink, which I consider close enough to paint for comparison. If you pore over my photobucket (http://s280.photobucket.com/home/RodgerTheGreat/index) you'll find a blend of my drawings and screenshots of projects I've worked on.

I think part of this comes from my interest in video games. If you find yourself working as a one man show you'll quickly start developing skills with pixel art (or modeling and texturing if you work in 3D), much as programmers interested in webdev frequently start to pick up skills in graphic design. It would be nice to collaborate with other people and outsource some of these skills, but at the end of the day the best way to get precisely the results you have in mind is to be able to build every component of a project.

wollw• 15 years ago

I guess I do both. While I haven't been doing a lot of real painting recently (working on other projects) I certainly do. I have some paintings on Picasa (https://picasaweb.google.com/105616061675197682498) but I'm working on some sculptural work currently that lets me both program and make art (building some cellular automaton related stuff, see https://github.com/Wollw/Automaton-AVR).

muhfuhkuh• 15 years ago

"I want to start a startup, but I don't know how to program. How long will it take to learn?

I would guess a smart person can learn to hack sufficiently well in 6 months to a year."

Hmm... interesting take considering the source, especially when contrasted with the general mentality that programming and software development is the finest of all trades and takes a near preternatural mastery only found elsewhere in classical musicianship 300 years ago. I quite enjoy the feeling that I could be good in a year.

edanm2• 15 years ago

Note: he means "good enough", not good.

Which brings to mind patio11's constant reminders, that running a successful software business has very very little to do with programming well.

Which means that pg thinks that 6 months is the level you need to be at to be able to start a startup. This seems intuitively right to me, especially these days.

_delirium2• 15 years ago

In fact the usual advice is that you shouldn't be doing something technically virtuosic in a startup. If your startup's critical path includes writing something as technically impressive as the Glasgow Haskell Compiler, you might have trouble...

Though there are a few people around here who've built software businesses around things that are also nontrivial technical advances; cperciva comes to mind.

tspiteri• 15 years ago

Not exactly the same thing, but this does remind me of a quote from I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59:

"I didn't trust Larry and Sergey as coders," said Craig Silverstein. "I had to deal with their legacy code from the Stanford days and it had a lot of problems. They're research coders: more interested in writing code that works than code that's maintainable." According to Jeff, one of the quirks in the early Stanford version of Google was that when something unusual happened the program would print out an error message without any explanation. The message read simply, "Whoa, horsey!"

enko• 15 years ago

> Which brings to mind patio11's constant reminders, that running a successful software business has very very little to do with programming well

That may be appropriate for patio11. Not to demean the guy but let's be clear, he runs an online bingo service. It's my understanding that he makes much more money from consulting gigs leveraged from this modest endeavour.

Rest assured that if your ambition is to write the next Dropbox or, hell, any YC company, at least 50% of your founding team will need to be very good programmers indeed.

ofca• 15 years ago

I am also fueled by his answer here. I guess that learning parameter depends on your teacher - the better the teacher, the better and faster you learn.

I just started learning HTML, CSS, jQ, PHP recently , and I found myself advancing at surprisingly high pace (now watching jQ new_boston tutorials on youtube).

Main problem for me is finding good material to learn from, since I only learn from the internet.

You have any advice considering good online sources for a total beginner to learn coding really well ?

wallawe2• 15 years ago

http://www.w3schools.com is pretty informative if you haven't already checked that out.

The best thing to do, especially if you are on a budget is spend a few hours in a bookstore each week reading over various books on various subjects. I found this a lot more helpful.

chernevik2• 15 years ago

It has taken me considerably longer than a year. But I might not be smart. And I've tried to do it on my own, rather than taking a job (see prior sentence).

Caveat: I'm not a developer, so my comments about learning how to program should be taken with considerable skepticism. But I have some opinions based my effort to learn.

For me, programming syntax is less a problem for me than poorly organized code, poor grasp of problems and poorly thought out solutions. Design is a subtle and important topic that does not lend itself to the shorter coverage typical of internet material. Book-length immersion in the concepts is only a beginning to an understanding. So I think your "internet only" restriction is a severe constraint.

But it isn't as if there are many design books for beginners. These generally target people who've mastered some languages and know the design-problem space. "Pragmatic Programmer" was a big help.

I have found test-driven development an enormous help. It feels cumbersome, but you always know what problem you're trying to solve. "Test Driven JavaScript Development", Johansen, is an excellent overview of the approach. I'm also trying to work through Beck's "Test Driven Development By Example" doing the exercises in Ruby, but it's a side project that hasn't gotten much attention.

I repeat: I'm not a developer. Hopefully this is thought-provoking, but I'm no authority.

wmboy• 15 years ago

I'm going through the Eloquent JavaScript book at the moment and am finding it slow but rewarding (there's a free HTML version of the book online). It's probably the next step after mastering jQuery...

crgt• 15 years ago

I've been inspired by Gladwell's more general answer from the book Outliers:

"Gladwell repeatedly mentions the "10,000-Hour Rule", claiming that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practicing a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Outliers_(book)

At an average of 50 hrs/week this means it would take you close to 4 years to achieve mastery. pg is certainly correct that you can be productive before this point, but I do believe mastery is much less a function of calendar time, and much more a function of how many coding hours you can get under your belt as the days fly by.

kragen3• 15 years ago

Like most of Gladwell's ideas, it falls apart under the least examination. Consider a neurosurgeon. Perhaps after ten thousand hours of surgery she was an expert in surgery. But perhaps only a quarter of that time was spent performing neurosurgery. Does that mean she's not an expert neurosurgeon? Perhaps, then, after ten thousand hours of neurosurgery she has become an expert neurosurgeon. But maybe only 5% of that time consisted of excising glioblastomas from the anterior cingulate cortex. Does she need to spend ten thousand hours doing ACC glioblastomectomies in order to be an expert at that task?

In short, because what we normally mean by "tasks" or "fields" can be broken down into smaller tasks or fields, the statement is self-contradictory if they mean what they normally means. But if we search for a definition of "task" that makes the statement true, we can trivially find a circular one: a "field" is something that a talented person can achieve mastery of in about ten thousand hours of practice.

Once reformulated that way, it becomes clear that this is not a statement about human expertise or expert performance, but about the economic structure of current society, and in particular our degree of specialization: most people (within the professional class Gladwell finds interesting, anyway) work in jobs that require about ten thousand hours of focused practice by a talented person to reach mastery.

(I should point out that this occurred to me when I saw Jeff Fox (RIP: http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.forth/browse_thread...) claiming that the research Gladwell summarized meant that you needed about ten thousand hours of programming in Forth to be good at programming in Forth, so you shouldn't put too much stock in the opinions of experienced programmers who didn't have much Forth experience.)

Once stated this way, we can formulate interesting hypotheses about the cause: perhaps when a field starts to require substantially more than ten thousand hours of practice to master it, its practitioners start to specialize in a part of it, so that they can reach mastery sooner.

dforeman• 15 years ago

I think that question was included ironically- I.e., he's only been asked a handful of times. His sample size reflects the dearth of "learning how to program to build a viable webapp" stories and comments here. I don't even know if noob questions are accepted here- I've never seen one. I don't post them because I feel I should be finding answers on google rather than degrading the quality of this board.

The decision to learn enough programming to build what I want stemmed from the realization that understanding how my webapp will work at the technical level significantly refines my vision for the product- bringing it much closer to reality. Whereas before I was talking to recommendation engine people because I wanted "recommendation features like Hunch," now I'm working in PHP/SQL and getting exactly what I want. My current strategy is to talk to the CTO's and creators of similar webapps to understand their technology and language choices (e.g. GAE or MAMP, SQL or Solr), go as far as I can on my own, and then work with a tutor for an hour or two to get momentum and correct my architecture mistakes.

Estragon• 15 years ago

  > Couldn't you add something equivalent to Lisp macros to languages like
  > Perl or Python?
  >
  > Not without turning them into dialects of Lisp. Real macros need to
  > operate on the parse tree of the program.

Actually, I've thought about porting some of On Lisp to python using lib2to3 (http://docs.python.org/library/2to3.html) It's probably an obscenely bad idea, but I keep getting drawn back to it...

apgwoz• 15 years ago

How does 2to3 help you with this? If you intend to port macros, you're sort of out of luck in python.

njharman2• 15 years ago

PG's requirements; public ally exposed parse tree and ability to manipulate it before "compiling" doesn't python provide already? It just seems more in your face and 1st class sin lisp.

extramoose• 15 years ago

I must say that one of the things I value most is the fact that as a Hacker, I have also worked extensively in Landscaping, Kitchens, Coffe houses & Hotels. A wide range of interactions & processes in one's past can always be used as perspective when approaching the next fork in the road.

sthlm6• 15 years ago

The pointy-haired boss is a manager who doesn't program. So the surest way to avoid becoming him is to stay a programmer. What tempts programmers to become managers are companies with old-fashioned corporate structure, where the only way to advance in salary and prestige is to go into management.

I have to disagree with that. I've met many people, especially in larger enterprises, who started in development but then became more abstract over time. They weren't bad people, in fact, they were excellent at their job.

Programming to me has never been something that has to be continually pursued in order to stay fluent or able, but merely something that reflects your more basic skills and talents.

It's like playing a musical instrument. Almost anyone can learn playing the guitar, but it takes a special talent to excel at it. For the guitar this requires hearing, sense of rhythm, and others; for programming, this is analytical thinking, systematic thinking, and more. Some people will try to program but never be really good at it. I studied with people like that. It's not their fault, their skills are just in another area. Some others are great at it. Once they learned, it doesn't matter if they don't develop anything for 3 years; after their break, they look at a piece of code / framework / technology, understand what it does, and continue programming.

And the traits that make you a good programmer help you in other fields, even management. Yes, large corporations have structures, but we need structure to manage them. And we need managers. And a manager who was a distinguished developer will be much better suited for leading a team of developers -- even if he doesn't program any longer. This is a valid career path, and an interesting one at that.

My general opinion is that if you want to stay a programmer, find yourself a role where you can do that. If not, don't bother pursuing programming at all costs. It won't lead you in the right direction.

iand2• 15 years ago

My attitude is when you hire enough programmers that are better than you the best thing to do is get out of their way and focus on building the best environment for them. Call that role management if it helps.

sthlm6• 15 years ago

I find this to be a fairly hostile attitude toward management roles and unfortunately it's one that many people share. And it's ruining part of this industry. Not every manager is a 20-year old MBA grad who's out to ruin your business.

What you're describing -- a small team of independent programmers -- accounts for only one part of software engineering projects: programmers are at the center of the efforts, everything else is just overhead.

Many projects are more complex. Development spans multiple long-termed iterations, is time and safety-critical, very expensive and only an integrated part of a larger development process (e.g. automotive, aeronautics, ...). A lot of the man hours on these projects go into tasks that don't directly include programming. These are not necessarily management roles. You have Architects, Test Designers, ... not to count all the roles that have nothing to do with IT at all (if you design a car, what percentage or project members are programmers?).

I personally think that anyone who works in software engineering should have a strong background in programming/development. But active programming is not necessarily part of many roles in many software engineering projects today.

If you don't wish to work in such an environment, no one is forcing you to. If you are, and you are unhappy, explore different options. But don't underestimate the incredible importance that non-programmer roles play in many, many, many projects.

Volpe6• 15 years ago

> Almost anyone can learn playing the guitar, but it takes a special talent to excel at it.

Curious about this notion of 'special talent' - So some people are just born to be better guitar players? Are you saying that something in the brain is pre-wired to be a better guitar player?

I'd say for a claim like that, you need a citation (preferably multiple).

In my opinion: You can excel at anything you like, you just have to work at it (it helps if you do it when you're really young, as your brain has higher plasticity). Get rid of this "special talent" notion.

tentonwire• 15 years ago

I partially agree with the GP, except I would say it takes a special talent to excel at it in a given amount of time. A "special talent" in this case would be a predisposition to learning how to play a guitar.

>Are you saying that something in the brain is pre-wired to be a better guitar player?

Yes, whether due to nature or nurture, I would say certain people will be faster at learning how to play the guitar, and thus, be a better guitar player given an equal amount of exposure. Of course, you could always put more time into it, but there is only a finite amount of time available to a given individual.

No citations, but I believe this agrees with the general consensus. In fact, I would be greatly interested if anyone could provide studies showing the contrary.

sthlm6• 15 years ago

I wasn't actually arguing that people are born to be better at anything, although I suppose this is the general consensus.

Talent = "a special natural ability or aptitude" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/Talent)

Aptitude = "capability; ability; innate or acquired capacity for something" (http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/aptitude)

Like tentonwire argued, whether it's nature or nurture, people are better at some things than others.

From what I understand, you are effectively making the argument that anyone can excel at anything. In this case, I also concur with tentonwire, that the burden might be on you to prove that hypothesis.

robertk4• 15 years ago

"And a manager who was a distinguished developer will be much better suited for leading a team of developers -- even if he doesn't program any longer. "

I am not so sure about that. I would say a distinguished manager who was a developer might satisfy your criterion. Social skills, leadership, empathy, and other such traits might be (perhaps even overwhelmingly) more important. That suggests an interesting application of the Peter principle. It seems to me quite possible that promoting the worst developers will lead to (on average) better managers, since we would not be removing the best developers from the development pool (and thus lowering the average competency of the developers), while--assuming people skills are in the large independent from coding skills and come from a normal distribution--the promotee's people skills will likely be better than their coding skills.

Really quite counterintuitive, but to me, a cool idea.

sthlm6• 15 years ago

That's a much better point than the one I made.

Apteris2• 15 years ago

This neither confirms nor infirms Paul Graham's thesis. In fact, while PG's assertion was a bit too specific--pointy-haired boss means in general "bad manager", not "programmer turned manager"--I don't think you can deny that people want promotions, and in some places the only way to get promoted is to go into management. PG is of course correct in suggesting that if you want to keep programming, don't accept a promotion to a non-programming role. However, if you find this stunts your career growth, you can either look for a job in a company that will allow you to grow as a programmer, or you can choose to go into management. That many programmers are averse to this doesn't make it a bad choice. You just have to know what you're getting into, and hopefully how to do it well.

Programming to me has never been something that has to be continually pursued in order to stay fluent or able, but merely something that reflects your more basic skills and talents.

Depends on what your goal is. It's perfectly possible to build a good career without keeping up with the bleeding edge of research. You don't have to know what monads are to be well compensated (at least in a Western country). However, neither will you be the next Peter Norvig. If you want to make money, there's many ways to do that. If you want to eventually get a Turing Award... there's fewer ways to do that.

A manager who is a good programmer will be golden at interview time. Whether he will also be a good lead is unclear. Like iand said, they should get out of the way and enable programmers to work optimally. As an aside, the structure of corporations and how it affects programming is an interesting topic worthy of its own discussion thread.

sthlm6• 15 years ago

PG is of course correct in suggesting that if you want to keep programming, don't accept a promotion to a non-programming role.

That's not what he is suggesting though: His statement doesn't include "if you want". He formulates it as an at-all-costs mantra -- stay in programming, for the worst could happen. It can be absolutely horrid advice to a number of people who would excel even more at other IT roles or management roles (see interesting comment from robertk [1]). I myself was long not considering applying to non-development roles, because many of those great opportunities are more and more looked down upon as "not programming". I know some people who've come as far as "Be Mark Zuckerberg or die trying", completely rejecting any business model that isn't two guys coding in a garage. I didn't actually read PG's comment like that -- I have the utmost respect for PG; but this is the background for why I authored such an opposing comment. I don't actually think the RAQs we are discussing were designed to be put under lawyer-like scrutiny ;)

Depends on what your goal is

Completely agree. Casual focus will rarely lead to greatness.

they should get out of the way and enable programmers to work optimally

For someone to get out of the way, he first has to be in the way. You make the general assumption that a manager is bad unless he actively changes his style. I cannot challenge this assumption for I have no data or ideas on where to find some concerning if managers are universally good or bad. And even then employee satisfaction might not be the only metric to measure success. Although I do think that having fun at work is one of the most, if not the most important metric. Many things would be better if everyone enjoyed their work.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3012765

rwmj• 15 years ago

He's really wrong about LISP macros. Would suggest pg takes a look at camlp4.

Edit: maybe instead of downvotes, you could reply explaining what's wrong with this position. Or just look at camlp4 and see how it provides macros that are better (with a better underlying language) than LISP. And yes, I've written a LISP compiler.

zedshaw2• 15 years ago

You questioned PG and LISP in one comment then advocated another language with a lesser Nerd Lore Composite Score. About the only thing you could have done worse is to admit you wrote a child porn site in both and found LISP's parentheses to be annoying. :-)

Goladus5• 15 years ago

PG's assertions are often hard to question, probably because he studied philosophy and is very good at logic. He doesn't say it's impossible and his definition of lisp is very inclusive.

I read some of the docs for camlp4. It looks like a library for extending ocaml using syntax grammars, similar to Langscape(formerly EasyExtend) for Python. It's not clear whether that really addresses PG's point (a). It would be really nice if rwmj would make his point explicit instead of whining about downvotes and telling people to go slog through camlp4's incomplete, broken-english documentation.

biot2• 15 years ago

The downvotes are likely because your position consists of little more than "google why he's wrong". If you wish to refute pg's statement you should explain what's right about your position, such as why camlp4's macros aren't just a prettier syntax on top of a LISP-like abstract syntax tree as the Wikipedia article states.

colanderman• 15 years ago

Easy reason: camlp4's macros are typechecked. Meaning, it's impossible to build an invalid syntax tree using them.

Robin_Message• 15 years ago

My personal opinion is that a type system on top of macros needs types that are too painful for anyone to actually use. The winning element of Lisp macros is that they are dirt simple and untyped, which makes them easier to write (but makes run-time errors more likely).

At a meta level, you might as well argue that Python programmers should be using ML instead, since the features are similar but ML is statically typed so more errors can be found at compile-time. The logic of the argument is correct, and yet Python (and Ruby and Javascript and so on) win. Again, I think its to do with easy of expression and less thought up front, but I'm not really sure.

larrys4• 15 years ago

"Two startups want to hire me. Which should I choose?

The one with the most determined and smartest founders (in that order) is the more likely to succeed. "

All else being equal this is true and it's good advice.

But unfortunately when you are choosing from two startups to work for all else is not equal.

NY_Entrepreneur11• 15 years ago

Nice. He covers several topics that would be good to have covered on some "What I wish my father had explained to me when I was 12, however, I've come to expect that mostly he didn't understand very well.". But among topics it would have been good to have had Dad cover, PG omits the biggie, especially for hackers, maybe for painters -- how to make an A in Women 101-102!

larrys4• 15 years ago

"how to make an A in Women 101-102!"

My initial reaction to this was to agree with the statement. And I still sort of do.

But I think women (or men) can be a big distraction if you are trying to create something. That being said the correct woman or men can help you achieve as well if the relationship is stable. The statement "behind every great man" there is a ... is basically true from my experience.

NY_Entrepreneur11• 15 years ago

"Behind every great man is a woman"? Maybe! In the case of FDR, Ike, Patton, and McArthur, I suspect it was more their mothers than their wives! Few men have such helpful mothers!

Then there is your "if the relationship is stable". Well, yes, and 'effective'! So, and especially for the huge fraction of men who don't have mothers as helpful as FDR's, how to get such a 'relationship'????!!!! May I suggest Women 101-102!!!!

Otherwise, yup, "can be a big distraction if you are trying to create something". Twelve year old boys, BELIEVE this!

Indeed, one of the first lessons in Women 101-102 is: Since the sixth grade or so, you REALLY wanted the girls to like you, right? So, you did this and that and it didn't work very well, right? Well, heavily what the girls want to see in a boy or man is someone strong, capable, and confident who understands the emotions of girls and women and is nice to them. For a while, being a successful quarterback on the varsity football team can work well. But, big secret: What REALLY works well is to be out of school, have a good career going, have plenty of money in your pocket, have a nice car, say, a recent Corvette, have a house bought, and have plenty of money to be able to support a wife and children. Then a large fraction of the females will, to exaggerate a little, do 'just ANYTHING' to be 'friendly'! Usually they won't even be able to help themselves! Uh, that reaction is a 'built-in function'! With these advantages in place, your brand of aftershave, blue jeans, shoes, cell phone, manner, tone of voice, pickup lines, even height and weight, etc. won't much matter! How 'bout that!

In particular, largely f'get about females your own age. Instead, in your teens, go for girls 1-4 years younger than you are. If she is 13 and you are 16, then she can be REALLY impressed that you have your own car but won't expect you to have a good career or a house yet!

Next, as from an expert on females, "Of COURSE, women are MUCH more emotional than men. That's the cause of all the problems.". Yup, not exactly right, but close! In a 101 level description, what rationalism and logic are for a hacker programming, fixing a car, diagnosing a network problem, etc. emotions are for females. In simple terms, first-cut, at the level males need to understand starting at age 12, the life of a female is all about emotions. Even when she is doing math or science, mostly she is seeking good 'emotions' from praise, acceptance, and approval from others she wants to please!

That's enough!

robertk4• 15 years ago

Lesson 1 is that you don't make an A. The girls get an A from you. I know girls want me, and I make them chase me. Combine that with the basics (dress well and go out and talk to girls) and you're halfway there. But don't think "basics" means easy; you'll be surprised at the number of excuses a perfectly normal guy will make not to say hi to that girl.

Man up, walk over to her, and say "Hi. I thought you looked cute and wanted to meet you. I'm Robert." Repeat times 1000. That was your warm-up. Now things should feel much more natural and you will understand a whole lot more about social interaction.

NY_Entrepreneur11• 15 years ago

I wasn't trying to be comprehensive at all on women! I was just joking that PG's post omitted a big topic -- women! I did give a few remarks on women that would be good for a guy 12 to know, but, again, I was not at all trying to be comprehensive.

Your remark might be good and, thus, a good contribution to some Web site that tries to provide advice "What I wish my father had explained to me when I was 12, however, I've come to expect that mostly he didn't understand very well."

For making an A in Women 101-102, right, the grade is to come from some unnamed course professor and not from the women the man wants to meet!

siglesias7• 15 years ago

Re: philosophy, I think understanding the difference between representing the world in language and representing it in logic is critically important to programmers. It has implications for natural language processing as well as artificial intelligence. I personally recommend to anyone endeavoring to understand Wittgenstein's transition from Tractatus Logico Philosophicus to Philosophical Investigations. In fact, Google used the family resemblance concept from PI to inform its search algorithm early on to attribute diffent meanings to the same search term.

What you take away is a very precise way to pose questions that make sense and to avoid questions that don't make sense.

dzuc• 15 years ago

(I designed a nested version of the Tractatus if you're interested: http://tractatuslogico-philosophicus.com/)

andreasvc• 15 years ago

I spotted two mistakes:

it says somewhere "thought it need not be red"; should be "though".

Proposition 4.022 should be called 4.002, according to my edition and another edition on the web I checked.

Perhaps the Gutenberg edition you used is not as properly proofread as one would hope.

Mentioning the source on the site is probably a good idea, for those not inclined to open up the source and hunt for it.

chernevik2• 15 years ago

I disagree with pg about the use of philosophy. If nothing else, Plato should disabuse anyone of the notion that what's obvious to them isn't really that solid. Aristotle at least demonstrates your point about just how hard it is to think systematically about this stuff.

The humility gained from those encounters would do a great deal to open people's minds that "there's more on heaven and earth than are dreamt of in your philosophy". Maybe people would less adamant, and pay more attention to why they hold their opinions. If everyone did that, we'd have far more productive discussions.

hnhg• 15 years ago

I agree. Philosophy is great for exposing how uncertain we are about things we believe we know for sure. He are some simple games that help demonstrate this:

http://www.philosophersnet.com/games/

marquis• 15 years ago

I completely agree. I would also recommend reading books and watching films about philosophers, novels and plays written by philosophers that is intended to be read as a narrative , and especially conversations with philosophers. You get a feel about how they came about their conclusions - what I am interested in is how a certain idea was arrived at, and philosophy can really give you some great analytical tools.

simonb• 15 years ago

Can you give any further reading/info on family resemblance as used by Google?

siglesias7• 15 years ago

I don't have the specific page citation but I read it in Levy's In the Plex.

You can see that Kindle users have highlighted the passage here: https://kindle.amazon.com/work/in-the-plex-ebook/B003QJNVO4/...

zackattack• 15 years ago

If somebody compiles the history books into an Amazon shopping list, I would gladly use your affiliate link. I haven't read any of them, which is shameful.

portman• 15 years ago

http://www.amazon.com/Civilisation-Kenneth-Clark/dp/07195684...

http://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Technology-Social-Change-Whit...

http://www.amazon.com/Penguin-Atlas-Ancient-History-Hist/dp/...

http://www.amazon.com/New-Penguin-Atlas-Medieval-History/dp/...

http://www.amazon.com/World-We-Have-Lost-Explored/dp/0415315...

http://www.amazon.com/Extension-Man-History-Physics-Quantum/...

http://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Benjamin-Franklin/dp/161...

http://www.amazon.com/Life-English-Country-House-Architectur...

http://www.amazon.com/Mohammed-Charlemagne-Henri-Pirenne/dp/...

http://www.amazon.com/Fall-Constantinople-1453-Canto/dp/0521...

http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Sails-Empires-Technological-Innov...

http://www.amazon.com/History-Rome-Origins-Roman-Historians/...

http://www.amazon.com/Art-War-Middle-Ages-378-1515/dp/080149...

http://www.amazon.com/Lives-Artists-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/d...

http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Trade-Moors-Kingdoms-Fourteenth...

http://www.amazon.com/Gallic-Wars-Caesars-Account-Conquest/d...

http://www.amazon.com/Copernican-Revolution-Planetary-Astron...

Note that about half of these are out of print.

jcarden2• 15 years ago

I threw together a page with each of the books individually. Hopefully, this will make getting your hands on them a bit more efficient. Enjoy.

PG's RAQ History Books - Home http://bit.ly/qRK15K (Use the bit.ly link so I can track. 39)

Otherwise, the site is: http://thebooksofhistory.weebly.com/

jcurbo• 15 years ago

I was going to look up most of them anyway, so I went ahead and made a list. No affiliate link though, but I don't mind.

http://amzn.com/w/1PVAVBE9JOW4Z

I am open to suggestions for changes, since some of the books are older there are multiple versions or translations available. Some of these are freely available as well - Franklin's autobiography and Caesar's Gallic Wars, for example.

I haven't read any of these particular books but I have read a great deal of other history books covering some of the same topics... this is a very good list though and now my to-read stack is going to be even higher :)

NY_Entrepreneur11• 15 years ago

"I want to start a startup, but I don't know how to program. How long will it take to learn?"

A year? Depends! To be very useful on Windows, really need to be okay on the content of several books, each about 1000 pages long, have worked through about 2500 Web pages of documentation at Microsoft's MSDN, along with more pages from other sources. Then need to write some code, at least as exercises, using what learned. For writing code, need to learn either an integrated development environment (IDE), e.g., Visual Studio, or get good with a powerful text editor (I use KEdit) and its macro language (I have about 150 such macros) and a scripting language. And need to get good with Windows, e.g., have traversed much of the obscure tree of things to click on. And need to be good at software installation, e.g., .NET Framework, service packs, IIS (for a Web server), Internet Explorer and some other Web browsers, likely some version of Office, maybe Knuth's TeX, SQL Server or some alternative, etc. Should learn some Word, Excel, and PowerPoint. Should learn some T-SQL, HTML, CSS, ASP.NET, and ADO.NET. Also need to be good at backup and recovery, ESPECIALLY of the operating system and boot drive. A year? Want to give up sleep for a year?

pbreit2• 15 years ago

For web development, you don't need any of that. And anyone taking up pg's suggestion should not be using anything from Microsoft.

NY_Entrepreneur11• 15 years ago

"For web development, you don't need any of that."

For Web development on Windows, that is a good list of a minimal list of EXACTLY what is needed. Web development on Windows is JUST what I'm doing, and that list of topics is JUST what is centrally involved.

What are you going to leave out? T-SQL? OS backup and recovery? Good skills with an IDE or editor?

Yes, learning most of, say, Visual Basic by itself is easy. The 'rub' is that for anything at all serious in Web development or just software development, it is just crucial to make good use of .NET, and that is HUGE. For a long time, nearly each time you turn around, you will need to use another .NET class, and that will take you 1-3 dozen Web pages at MSDN to find, download, save, index, abstract, and read. The total of MSDN Web pages needed adds up quickly: I have over 2500 now, and it grows quickly. Just yesterday I downloaded a lot just for 'request data validation'. Before that, the topics were HtmlEncode and UriEncode. Before that, TCP/IP sockets. Before that, Windows Communications Foundation. Before that Windows 'remoting'. Before that, Windows remote procedure call. Before that, a LOT on SQL Server administration and mangement. And on and on and on. It's ENORMOUS.

richcollins• 15 years ago

Couldn't you add something equivalent to Lisp macros to languages like Perl or Python?

Yes, see Io:

http://iolanguage.com/

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/64mgk/why_io_ha...

http://web.archive.org/web/20090427182332/http://hackety.org...

phaedrus• 15 years ago

I was about to say the same thing. Since Io represents the program as an expression tree of messages, you can write macros to operate on the message tree, and they work for Io's syntax as easily as Lisp macros work for Lisp syntax.

anatoly2• 15 years ago

Also see metalua.

thisrod• 15 years ago

Also see Smalltalk, for contrast. Lisp's uniform syntax lets the interpreter rewrite parts of programs; Smalltalk's uniform semantics let programs rewrite parts of the interpreter. PG's discussion of objects overlooks that.

OMeta looks like a combination of the two. It sounds really interesting, but I suspect it's for people smarter than me.

draegtun2• 15 years ago

Ditto for Ioke & Perl6.

Some previous HN posts: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2144067 & http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2157961

jackfoxy8• 15 years ago

What should I read to learn more about history?

I used to consider my knowledge of history better than at least 95% of the population, but while reading The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire I realized how sketchy my view of history really was. So at the ripe old age of 35 I set off on a course of study centered on two series of books, The Story of Civilization, by Will and Ariel Durant, and Timeframe, a Time-Life series focusing on a timeframe in human history and what was going on in all parts of the world inhabited by man: lots of pictures and of course superficial, but it painted in a lot of gaps I othewise would have never covered. The Timeframe series starts much earlier than the Durant's, but once both series were in sync I would read the books in both series for an epoch, as well as at least two other books, either written in the era or about the era, drawing mostly from science, culture, and biography. For instance I read all the books of Euclid, Newton's Optiks and Principia (I slogged through the Motte transaltion before the first modern English translation became available), The Wealth of Nations, Shelby Foote's 3-volume history of the Civil War, and The Origen of Species. (It's real easy for me to spot folks who spoot-off about Wealth or Origen who have not actually read the books.) My program culminated with Tragedy and Hope, which being such an inflammatory work, I did not trust to read without the full background of history. The process was like watching Western Civilization unfolding.

Now for the unintended consequences: I became a bore at cocktail parties. I wanted to talk about the ideas in the fascinating book I was reading. I used to love arguing politics. Even with my prior knowledge it was hard enough finding opponents who would engage in rational discourse, now it is impossible. It's been so long my debating skills have totally gone down the tubes. The sad thing is I believe my problem is really society's. Political correctness (among other problems) in academia, has produced a generation of intellectually crippled intellectuals; and the entertainment industry, including the 24-hour news cycle as entertainment, has just stupefied people. I fear for democracy and republican government.

zedshaw2• 15 years ago

The force is strong with this one.

I'd love to debate random topics with you. Assuming you've actually read everything you claim, I think you'd be a refreshing change from the vast majority of people who simply regurgitate whatever their heroes say.

If you're interested, email me sometime: zedshaw at zedshaw.com.

marcamillion• 15 years ago

Hrmm...while I haven't read all of those books - granted I am still relatively young (sub 30) - I too feel like I have no outlet to really debate various topics that I would love to.

People really aren't interested.

If there was some forum where people of like minds could get together and talk (verbally, not typing on a keyboard) say a Google Hangout or something, I think that would be awesome and definitely something I would be interested in.

Provided it can be moderated and organized and not be chaos (and focused on content, learning, expanding knowledge, etc.).

jackfoxy8• 15 years ago

Zed, You are one of the interesting people I would like to meet someday. I will eventually get in touch. My job (among other distractons) is sapping me right now, but I hope to get back to real life by mid-November. Likewise I can be reached jacfoxy at gmail dot com.

anatoly2• 15 years ago

This is a good program. It reminds me of the curriculum of St. John's College: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St._John%27s_College_(United_St...

Perhaps I'm overly optimistic, but it seems plausible to me that there's a subreddit out there for people just like you.

eavc• 15 years ago

Either DepthHub or TheAgora, maybe.

jackfoxy8• 15 years ago

I was contacted by St.John's as a high school senior, and thought their program looked really interesting, but my folks couldn't afford a private college for me. In those days a California resident could go to U.C. and it just cost living expenses and books.

mdiep• 15 years ago

I'd love to see a full list of all the books you read and the order in which you read them. I recently started reading The Story of Civilization and augmenting it with other works seems like a wonderful idea.

jackfoxy8• 15 years ago

I've meant to compile this list, so you just inspired me. I wish the Durants had had the stamina for one more volume. I don't know much about the European revolutions of 1848 and would have like to read about that time from them. I already had read a lot of ancient Greek literature in translation as well as The Pentateuch, all the historical books of the Old Testament and the Gospels. Western Civilization springs from intellectual roots in Athens and Jerusalem, so any survey has to include that heritage. My degree is in Comparative Literature, so I put a lot of stock in origninal source material. The only languages I read are English and German, so everything is in English or translation except Faust, which IMO would be a waste in translation. The books I read for my survey (this was my survey to fill in my personal Bildungslöcke) are not all classics, and not even all to be recommended. It may appear surprisingly heavy on 20th century, but a lot of intellectual threads I thought I should understand better got kicked off in that century. In more or less chronological order by authorship or content (and I've probably forgotten a few):

Euclid The Elements

Arrian The Campaigns of Alexander

Garmonsway (trans.) The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle

Komroff (ed.) The Travels of Marco Polo

Haydn The Counter-Renaissance

Braudel The Mediterranean and the Mediterranean World in the Age of Phillip II, Vol I&II

Pascal The Thoughts

Spinoza The Ethics

Christianson In the Presence of the Creator: Isaac Newton & his Times

Newton Opticks

Newton Principia (get the modern English translation by U.C. Press)

Hampson The Enlightenment

Voltaire Candide

Rousseau The Social Contract

Boswell Life of Johnson

Goethe Faust

Phillips The Cousins' Wars

Schom Napoleon Bonaparte

Heidler & Heidler Old Hickory's War

Babbage On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures

de Toqueville Democracy in America

Darwin On the Origen of Species

Foote The Civil War: A Narrative

Maurois Disraeli

Twain Life on the Mississippi

Spector Admiral of the New Empire, The Life and Career of George Dewey

Cardwell The Norton History of Technology

Abbott Flatland, A Romance of Many Dimensions

Meyer & Brysac Tournament of Shaddows, The Great Game and the Race for Empire in Central Asia

Doughty Travels in Arabia Deserta

Lefevre The Golden Flood

Massie Dreadnought, Britain, Germany, and the Coming of the Great War

Lawrence Seven Pillars of Wisdom

Durant The Story of Philosophy

Cardozo The Nature of the Judicial Process

Schapiro The Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Popper The Logic of Scientific Discovery

Kershaw Hitler: 1889-1936 Hubris

Blemenson (ed.) The Patton Papers (1940-1945)

Hayek The Road to Serfdom

von Mises Human Action

Skinner Walden Two

Chambers Witness

Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions

Guevara Guerrilla Warfare

Cleaver Soul on Ice

Lacey The Kingdom, Arabia & the House of Saud

Durant The Lessons of History

Hackworth Lessons Learned, Vietnam Primer

Quigley Tragedy & Hope: A History of the World in Our Time

EDIT: Just remembered two more

Hobbes Leviathan

Locke Two Treatises of Government

Willwhatley2• 15 years ago

I've wondered about variants on democracy. The parliamentary and constitutional forms seem to me to incentivize (for those who want power) going along to get along. Sophists, flatterers, demagogues; there is no good incentive to vote, only the strong disincentive of some other party's bums overseeing you rather than ones you know.

There's a Twain short story about folks who get more than the initial vote, in proportion to their accomplishments. So a propertied or moneyed man is so much more enfranchised, a doctor of philosophy has a couple more votes, and so forth. The incentive there for demagogues would seem to weight one even more firmly than presently in favor of the rich and the academic guild. I don't support any scheme that brings us closer to a plutocracy than we already are--merely mention this as a starting point.

And then there is government by lot; the next dogcatcher, etc. to be selected in some randomized fashion, perhaps confine the pool to certified catchers of dogs, treason for tampering, and so forth. The incentive becomes enormous to raise the general quality of the citizens in proportion to how broad the pool of candidates is; and, of course, to monkey with the criteria for candidates to benefit oneself and disadvantage one's adversaries.

Volpe6• 15 years ago

There are democratic countries where it is compulsory to vote .

This of course brings it's own set of problems...

derrida3• 15 years ago

"It's real easy for me to spot folks who spoot-off about Wealth or Origen who have not actually read the books." What is sad is that I recall realizing at University that certain graduate students had not read some of the books they were teaching! I think the humanities are vitally important, but the academic humanities, unfortunately, sometimes breed a certain kind of person who wants to get a job in academia for impure reasons.

Alex3917• 15 years ago

Do you find that at some point reading more history has diminishing returns in terms of your ability to understand current politics?

It seems like having good political sense requires two things: having a solid understanding of the current state of people and assets, and having a good understanding of the impacts of policy. (As well as having some understanding of the whole human experience thing.)

While history is obviously important for understanding this stuff, it seems like after a certain point one would get more insight from other places. I don't doubt that most people don't know enough of history to understand politics, but at the same time most people don't know enough of anything else to understand politics either.

jackfoxy8• 15 years ago

Don't confuse knowledge with understanding. Almost all good things exhibit diminishing returns. One lesson of history is to gain deeper understanding of human nature. That is a big key to understanding politics in any age. Plenty of people become adept at politics knowing nothing of history. Another lesson of history is to understand the balance between conservatism and progressivism. Birds need left wings and right wings to fly. Healthy societies need conservatives and progressives, but the so-called left/right dynamic is only the most apparent dynamic in politics, the one with the most entertainment value; and so the entertainment industry exploits it and ends up devolving political discourse. Think of the carnival side-show 3 shell game. The shells moving around and the banter between the con-man and the shills distracts everyone and provides entertainment. Where the ball ends up is the libertarian/authoritarian dynamic of politics. Most people don't have a clue, but if you have gained understanding from history (which requires studying a balance of sources) you see it. History is only one course of study to gain understanding of human nature and balance.

maw• 15 years ago

Now for the unintended consequences: I became a bore at cocktail parties.

I dunno, I think it'd be more interesting to talk with you than to talk with people about what they drank at the last party they went to--especially since "what" usually just means "how much".

dgreensp• 15 years ago

>I never had to manage anyone in our startup, even though I was the president. The other hackers were my peers, and would have given me the raspberry if I'd tried to "manage" them. We operated by consensus. And the rest of the company reported to our experienced COO, who was also more of a peer.

Operating by consensus and not valuing the role of "manager" only goes so far. It may work when you're a few people living together, but I think it ultimately leads to cultures like Google's, where every decision requires a room full of engineers to agree.

frisco• 15 years ago

Are you saying that Google is anything other than one of the world's most wildly successful companies of the last decade?

sjtgraham• 15 years ago

No, he is saying operating by consensus doesn't scale.

cwp• 15 years ago

Google has had both success and failure. The successes have paid for the failures and then some, but the failures did happen.

AaronI• 15 years ago

Agreed. It's essentially design by committee, which may work well when there's only a handful of you, but consensus of several individuals is difficult to reach, and the obvious or safe choice is accepted with little insight or vision. Committees create divisiveness and perpetuate a loss of vision. They exist only because individuals are taught that consensus is more important than making the right decision.

njharman2• 15 years ago

The real problem with consensus is that all members have to be well above average in several categories (skill, experience, communication, risk/fission making, passion, determination, etc). That is much rarer think most suppose (cause the only startups/teams You hear about are the ones with that, the rest fail and are never known). It is impossible to scale.

At scale you try to find above avg leaders who know how to solicit input and sell ideas.

InclinedPlane• 15 years ago

There's a flaw in his reasoning here that comes from working with extremely talented people. When you work with such people process is frequently irrelevant, because no matter what process is used they will find some way to get things done and done well. This can lead you into a false sense of victory about whatever process you happened to be using, even though it was the people who were the decisive factor in success.

iskander• 15 years ago

>I think it ultimately leads to cultures like Google's, where every decision requires a room full of engineers to agree.

What is this fantasy Google? The Google I interned at was highly hierarchical, with enough meddling managers to drive this whole thread insane.

pg8• 15 years ago

Yes, you're right. I was implicitly assuming the startup never gets big enough that you have to become a real manager. Obviously in the unlikely event the startup turns out to be Google or Facebook, consensus may no longer work.

breck• 15 years ago

> The pointy-haired boss is a manager who doesn't program. So > the surest way to avoid becoming him is to stay a programmer.

I agree. One of the absolute worst pieces of advice I got over and over again was "don't go into programming. It's all being outsourced overseas anyway. Just learn how to manage programmers." Luckily for some reason I finally decided to ignore that advice and strive to become a great programmer myself. One of the, if not the, best decisions in my entire life.

Even now, although I certainly could become more of a "manager", I choose to stay in the pit coding. Although I now do tasks that can be called "managing" such as helping out other coders with their bugs and problems, mentoring, communicating with people outside of engineering, recruiting and interviewing, the biggest chunk of my time is spent programming and working on my skills.

It's worked for PG. It's worked for Paul Farmer(replace "programming" with "doctoring"). I'd bet it's worked for nearly every master of their field. I think it's an essential rule to follow.

kemiller• 15 years ago

Those task are not just things that could be called "managing" they ARE managing. I think it's funny that programmers think of managing as this horrid thing outside their realm, but really, it's just the skill of working with others and extending your reach beyond your own fingers.

To that end, I think PG is dead wrong. Programmers can make great managers, and find it very rewarding, even if they're not in code all day. There's as much variation in that end of the business as their is in the coding. Would you go into programming if you believed that ever job was a dead-end VB jockey? Of course not. The way to avoid being a PHB is to avoid behaving like a PHB.

moomin• 15 years ago

Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy is a great place to start. Of course, it's as much an introduction to his thinking as anyone else's, but it's accessible and thoughtful. Memorable for the phrase "existence is not a predicate".

corin_4• 15 years ago

Does anyone have any insight into why painters are less common among hackers than other artistic persuits, such as music?

I've never met anyone who bridged visual art with anything tech-related, but composers, singers, pianists, orchestra members... hell yes.

Is it just that painters are less common that musicians and that ratio stays true in the tech world?

Samuel_Michon3• 15 years ago

"I've never met anyone who bridged visual art with anything tech-related"

You've never met a web designer, video editor, 3D artist or graphic designer?

corin_4• 15 years ago

Yeah my bad, wasn't specific enough - I meant painters, sculpters and the like.

In my head they are called "art", I have to make an active decision to think of "art" as "the arts" including other things - guess just the way I learned the vocab. as a kid. So it was already a step to edit from "art" to "visual art".

Perhaps I should have gone with "static visual art that is created for the sake of being art"?

As to your examples, I suspect the main reason that there's such a link is (obviously) the big crossover. If you're an artist who wants to make money making websites, or videos, or whatever, it makes sense to learn at least some of the technology related to it to help you. And if you're, say, a website developer, it sometimes makes sense to go the other way too.

4ad• 15 years ago

Well, people call me a hacker and I do paint. I don't claim that I'm good, I'm just an amateur, but I am doing it! Take a glimpse of my work: http://imgur.com/a/6BdJS#TmmoJ

I also play piano, compose music and write (bad) poetry! I have a small sample of my music here: http://soundcloud.com/mournfulempathy/empathy-intro .

I don't think I'm good as a painter but it is a hobby I enjoy greatly!

earbitscom• 15 years ago

Music has a lot more to do with math, logic, structure, and other technical skills and requirements than most other forms of art.

urza• 15 years ago

I clicked through to the Return of the Mac [1] article and it would be of interest to me to know how this community and PG sees the Macs today? Recently some people on HN said that they dont like where the Lion is heading [2] or that OS X is goining to be more closed than open [3]. So.. what are you hacking on today?

[1] http://www.paulgraham.com/mac.html

[2] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2933895

[3] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2368932

seanmccann• 15 years ago

How important is knowledge of history when it comes to building a startup? What are the most important periods of time to learn about?

biot2• 15 years ago

Start with 1995 - 2001.

shithead• 15 years ago

I wish some people would bless us with dates on their timeless essays.

(You too, Peter Norvig.)

jed_s• 15 years ago

http://wayback.archive.org/web/*/http://www.paulgraham.com/r... crawled 130 times going all the way back to February 7, 2004

ecocentrik• 15 years ago

PG lost me at the first question. A better answer would be; they are both highly technical skills with almost no overlap that take boatloads of time to master. We all know the bene gesserit mantra...

delano• 15 years ago

That question is a reference to this essay (and later, book of the same name):

http://www.paulgraham.com/hp.html

onan_barbarian4• 15 years ago

The tendentious answer on philosophy is an invitation for what would be another "Dabblers and Blowhards" drive-by shooting.

It's not enormously surprising that this question is 'rarely asked'. One would learn a lot more about philosophy ("what questions are these guys asking?" "what are some of the answers they've come to?") from even a mediocre introductory text or a chat with a TA/tutor, than by assuming that this rather sophomoric answer represents a reasonable response to the entire field. Calling it 'sophomoric' doesn't properly engage with the claims, but the claims are so smug, random and content-free:

"Books on philosophy per se are either highly technical stuff that doesn't matter much, or vague concatenations of abstractions their own authors didn't fully understand (e.g. Hegel)... It can be interesting to study ancient philosophy, but more as a kind of accident report than to teach you anything useful."

... that I can't find anything remotely meaningful to engage with.

Someone recommended Russell's History of Western Philosophy as an option; this isn't bad (although its treatment of Continental philosophy is hopelessly biased, it would still be enough to get you oriented).

The fact that whenever PG makes statements on some area I understand more about (philosophy, politics, economics) seem to be incredibly shallow, juvenile crowd-pleasers, makes me wonder at his expertise in areas that I don't know much about (history, painting).

forensic4• 15 years ago

What kind of people does pg draw in?

Its mainly naive young programmers (socially stunted nerds) who believe they are smarter than everyone and have everything figured out.

I believe nerd hubris comes from a fundamental lack of empathy; an inability to put themselves in the shoes of people who are different.

People who lack perspective are easy pickings for silver tongued writers who make emotionally-potent audience-felating oversimplifications.

AmericanOP2• 15 years ago

I don't understand why this crowd is more likely to hit the verbal 'dislike' button than average. Why do people think it's so important to share that they resist the attraction of something? The name-calling and prodding is especially disturbing.

pg8• 15 years ago

It's hard to get that deep in a couple paragraphs. But there is a longer version here:

http://paulgraham.com/philosophy.html

jsomers• 15 years ago

I wrote a response to this (in defense of philosophy) a few years ago at http://jsomers.net/pg-philosophy.html.

And here's the yc discussion about it: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=404707.

onan_barbarian4• 15 years ago

I don't think you got much deeper in the long form.

From what I recall, these critiques of philosophy are well-known in philosophy, especially reactions to Aristotle. A inexperienced reader would get the impression that Aristotle and the mistakes he engendered went unchecked for a couple thousand years, until brought to bay by the sterling efforts of Bertrand Russell and Paul Graham.

From someone proposing a new approach to philosophy (!):

1. I would expect to see a little more on some of the less peculiar empiricists - Berkeley, in my dim memories, was the most obscure of that little grouping.

2. A less Cliff's Notes discussion of what's happened in analytic philosophy that strays beyond the brand names (Russell, Wittgenstein) wouldn't go astray either. Claiming it's all about 'language games' is a sophomoric 'out' to having to engage with any of the rest of analytic philosophy.

impendia3• 15 years ago

So there is some discussion in the other thread, but I'll add my own. You ask that philosophy be useful. Here then, is a useful question:

Suppose that my mother has Alzheimer's disease, and that I find the prospect of caring for her inconvenient, undesirable, and/or expensive. Do I have a responsibility to care for her anyway?

It is "useful" because it could potentially describe a real-life situation in which one might have to make a decision. Analyzing this quickly leads one to a general discussion of ethics.

As you point out, definitions are imprecise. What does it mean to say I have a "responsibility", or that I "ought" to do something? Logic and observation can get one to "If I do nothing, then my mother will suffer and/or die", but this is not the heart of the matter.

I think there is no hope of a "solution", in the same way, say, that Fermat's Last Theorem was proved. But does that mean that studying ethics, and what the usual lineup of dead white males had to say about it, isn't worthwhile?

YuriNiyazov• 15 years ago

Do you believe that most of the stuff covered under philosophy of mind (Dennett, Searle, Block, Chalmers, Jackson, etc.) is not worth studying?

Edit: reduce strength of statement.

shoham2• 15 years ago

Very interesting article; although here's what I think gets missed when folks teach and talk about Philosophy since Russell: anything that smells even vaguely religious just doesn't count -- don't read it -- too spooky, too irrational. The only reason Greeks get away with it is, I think, because nobody takes the Greek gods seriously anymore (or at least no one is worried about too many people doing so, and causing trouble in the name of Zeus!)

So no King Solomon, no Vedas and probably no Confucius either, as secular as he tended to be.

You mentioned at the end of the article that"...philosophy was hopelessly intermingled with religion. It didn't shake itself free till a couple hundred years ago..." I'd have to counter that philosophy without religion is generally new, hollow and unworthy of much study -- which in some ways I think is your point.

I'm genuinely curious: Why (or if) you think that this decoupling is a good thing? So few other disciplines (only Religious Studies, and perhaps The Arts) ever touch upon the idea of spirit at all -- which I think is at the core of Philosophy -- the nexus of Sapience and Sentience. If one is not a fan of religion on principle (its over-adherence to both dogma, and dominance are two criticisms that I have), then certainly this is a strength of Philosophy -- the decoupling of religion from matters of the spirit/soul. Spinoza's The Ethics; and Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil are two interesting books for students of Philosophy to consider.

philwelch6• 15 years ago

It's interesting how a concise conclusion you disagree with is evidence of ignorance. I don't know how much you know about philosophy, but from what I picked up during my bachelor's, it turned out to be interesting but all in all not too important. The central problem is still there: anything that's rigorous enough that it might be true is narrowly scoped and doesn't come to a wide enough conclusion to be interesting, and anything that's especially vast in terms of implications is usually vague bullshit.

forensic4• 15 years ago

Your definition of "important" is deeply subjective.

steven5122• 15 years ago

Mortimer Adler has written some philosophy books that are accessible, like How to Think About the Great Ideas: From the Great Books of Western Civilization.

http://www.amazon.com/How-Think-About-Great-Ideas/dp/0812694...

Jun8• 15 years ago

In this regard, I found Talking Philosophy (http://www.amazon.com/Talking-Philosophy-Dialogues-Fifteen-P...) an excellent book, it consists of post-edited transcripts of interviews with leading philosophers on BBC. Prodded by Bryan Magee, the wise men in most cases come right to the point.

shin_lao• 15 years ago

I'm not sure the advice about "not becoming a pointy haired boss" is any good.

Not all structures can stay small enough to avoid management. The startup phase is just an initial phase that will dysfunction as the number of employees grow.

Additionally, I don't think that having a manager who programs is a way to increase management quality.

So how do you get good management? There's no simple answer to that, it's a central problem to all companies as they grow.

ekm2• 15 years ago

All of you have covered Western History extremely well.Which are the best books to study Asian and African History?

shoham2• 15 years ago

"I'm about to become a teacher. How can I be a good one?"

Also, be ready to put up with bullshit from parents, admins and other teachers who insist on the path of least resistance.

draegtun2• 15 years ago

Couldn't you add something equivalent to Lisp macros to languages like Perl or Python?

Perl6 comes with full Lisp-like macros: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perl_6#Macros

See previous HN discussion on this: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1279238

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