Paul Graham On Two Kinds of Programmers and Painters

http://cycle-gap.blogspot.com/2009/08/paul-graham-on-two-kinds-of-programmers.html

by rams • 17 years ago

75 73 17 years ago

cycle-gap.blogspot.com

I posit the transcriber interpreted Cézanne phonetically.

EAMiller• 17 years ago

"Cézanne could not draw, he makes the same drawing mistakes that every one makes in introductory drawing classes." This is not the case. Cézanne could draw exceedingly well. Drawing != photographic representation.

martian• 17 years ago

Yes, Cezanne could paint brilliantly: http://images.google.com/images?q=cezanne

pg8• 17 years ago

Obviously in this context I'm talking about drawing in the sense of rendering.

foldr6• 17 years ago

Right, but saying they're mistakes implies that he drew that way because he couldn't have rendered if he'd wanted to (your "Occam's razor" explanation). I don't know if that was meant to be tongue in cheek, but it seems kind of unlikely to me.

idlewords6• 17 years ago

Dude, don't make me have to write another essay.

http://www.frenchdrawings.org/search.php?dwg=460&vol=...

huntse4• 17 years ago

That doesn't make your statement any less false. It might suit your metaphor for that to be the case, but facts are stubborn things dude. Pretty good rendering here http://www.greatmodernpictures.com/drawinggal15lg.jpg

What about this one? Look like someone making mistakes in introductory drawing class to you? http://www.art-wallpaper.com/4056/C%C3%A9zanne+Paul/Sketch+a...

How about this? Beginner rendering perhaps? http://amica.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/AMICO~1~1~3...

The problem is you can't quite bring yourself to admit that you picked a really bad example. You wanted someone who's technical deficiencies were made up for by their conceptual skill, and you chose someone who could draft their ass off and also had an incredible ability to choose fantastic things to produce.

nuba• 17 years ago

Any camera can do this, "rendering" in the sense of "an objective, accurate, realistic view of the world".

Distortions and imperfections in the artwork convey the artist's subjective view of the world, and you need an artist for that.

Imagine a perfect rendering of what's depicted in Picasso's Guernica. It wouldn't work. And that came from someone who could probably do academic realism in a handstand and blindfolded ;)

huntse4• 17 years ago

let's look at that claim in detail. For example, does this http://www.greatmodernpictures.com/drawinggal15lg.jpg look to you like it was done by someone who couldn't draw? It's pretty darn accurately drafted.

kingkawn• 17 years ago

cmon pg, your interpretation of Cezanne is like Caravaggio talkin about Lisp.

pg8• 17 years ago

Can you give an example of something I said that you think is false? Or is this just a sort of reverse argument from authority?

huntse4• 17 years ago

Well the claim that Cezanne couldn't draw is pretty obviously contradicted by his sketches, especially when you look at them "in the flesh".

idlewords6• 17 years ago

False statements you have made about art:

"The paintings made between 1430 and 1500 are still unsurpassed." (easy refutation - go to sistine chapel, look up).

"What made oil paint so exciting, when it first became popular in the fifteenth century, was that you could actually make the finished work from the prototype."

This is not how people painted with oil until the 19th century. It was a very expensive medium requiring careful preparatory work, sketches, and so on.

"Most painters start with a blurry sketch and gradually refine it." - completely unsupported.

"Line drawings are in fact the most difficult visual medium" - yes, carving marble is much easier.

"When oil paint replaced tempera in the fifteenth century, it helped painters to deal with difficult subjects like the human figure because, unlike tempera, oil can be blended and overpainted." - again, this is how oil paint was used much later. At the time it was painted in thin, transparent layers that did not allow the kind of reworking you learned four hundred years later in art class.

And now we have 'Cézanne can't draw" to add to the list.

Many of your other statements about art fall more in the 'not even wrong' category - fatuous generalizations based on your own tastes, but presented as deep insights about the world.

So it is a little disingenuous of you to keep asking for people to point to specific places where you are wrong. The wrong is diffusely and uniformly distributed.

tokenadult• 17 years ago

Can you give an example of something I said that you think is false?

It's always helpful in discussions here on HN to have the courage to say something like that. Kudos for that. Thanks to those who have replied with specific answers. That puts lots of food for thought into the thread.

chipsy• 17 years ago

I think it's important to recognize that the creativity/implementation distinction isn't going to be universal across all your skills, even within something as seemingly specific as programming or drawing. Maybe you have an easy time reasoning about mutable data structures, or maybe you are particularly able at capturing light and shadow. If you can recognize which things are strengths and deliberately extend all of the things you are good at into an overall creative vision - a cumulation of your ability that takes those strengths to the "next level" - then you'll go a lot farther than you will just trying to shore up the weaknesses.

(That said, you can become good at just about anything with carefully cultivated passion and a dash of smarts.)

ThinkWriteMute• 17 years ago

What in the world is wrong with his style sheet? Why is the entire post emphasized?!

zimbabwe7• 17 years ago

The emphasized part is a quote. It just happens to be a long blocky quote, so it looks merely like a bold post.

gjm11• 17 years ago

Maciej Ceglowski, who is posting in this thread but evidently too modest to blow his own trumpet, wrote what seems like the definitive response to Paul Graham On Painting back in 2005: http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm .

Alex39173• 17 years ago

Definitive? It doesn't even address the ideas put forth in the essay.

pvg3• 17 years ago

Which ideas does it not address? The core idea of the original (hey, it's in the title) is that hackers are like painters. The argument of Ceglowski's response, whether you agree with it or not, is that they aren't.

pg8• 17 years ago

I never bothered to refute that at the time, but as a matter of fact practically everything he says there is mistaken. E.g. that no one painted alla prima till recent times, when arguably the most famous exponent of this style is Franz Hals, who worked in the early 1600s.

It's a strange situation. If someone writes an essay attacking you, you either have to respond, in which case you're letting someone else pick your topics, or you have to ignore it, in which case people who don't know any better may be convinced by it.

Though I'm not willing to use up an essay to refute someone, I will in a comment thread:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=984217

One thing I still wonder about is whether this guy actually believes what's he's saying, or whether he's deliberately trolling. He seems reasonably smart. How could he not have heard of Franz Hals? On the other hand, who would try to keep a troll going for 4 years?

idlewords6• 17 years ago

Frans Hals is actually my favorite painter, so if people take nothing else away from this thread, I would urge them to go check that shit out.

The exact quote I was responding to in my essay:

"When oil paint replaced tempera in the fifteenth century, it helped painters to deal with difficult subjects like the human figure because, unlike tempera, oil can be blended and overpainted."

In support of which you now cite... Frans Hals, a sui generis painter who worked two hundred years later. I'm surprised you chose him over El Greco, who at least is within two centuries of the time period under discussion.

It's been entertaining watching you try to walk your various misstatements about art history back in this thread, but I am somewhat surprised by this habit of calling people who poke holes in your writing "trolls", given that you are the author of a celebrated taxonomy of online argument that places name-callers among the lowest of the low.

Weenis.

asdflkj• 17 years ago

Besides idiots and trolls, there's a third large group of people who are brazenly wrong: those with psychological issues.

andrewcooke• 17 years ago

seems to me that, if this makes any sense, the interesting question is: why can't you have both?

given that selection for "great art" is over a large number of people, why can't you find someone that is gifted in both areas?

perhaps one somehow counteracts the other (for example, you are praised for "mechanical skills" and so never learn "abstract thinking")?

or perhaps the market values the combination of "poor mechanical skills" with "great abstract skills" because it places the latter in strong relief?

or perhaps you do get people who are both (gerhard richter is the best example i can think of), but that's not enough to meet demand? (or meet fashion?)

or perhaps the numbers just don't work out - the population is just large enough for one or the other, but not both?

or, finally, perhaps the whole basis of the post is, in fact, false?

zimbabwe7• 17 years ago

Yeah, Paul is talking up his ass.

Afraid I don't know enough about programmers or painters to spout names, but in any other artistic medium you've got a mix of all types. I'll use film as my example because film's a medium in which you have a hundred people working together, and very elaborate roles evolved to let people do exactly what they want to do.

Some directors function as merely directors. They decide what they like, and they have other people execute. But other directors can and do insist on controlling other parts of the creative process. I'm not a fan of James Cameron, but the guy writes, directs, and edits his movies, and he's very involved in set design as well. Some props he insists on making himself because he doesn't trust anybody else to do it right. So there's a guy who knows what he wants to do, and is also capable of the incredible technical feats required to pull it off.

Kirby• 17 years ago

Of course, in reality, most people aren't exactly these two extremes, great implementer and great innovator. Everyone has both traits in different amounts, and if you have a functioning team, they can be split up unevenly.

In this way of looking at things, I'll freely admit to being more of an implementer. If someone asks for what they want, I'll do my best to make the software do it in a way that's efficient and delights the user.

Given vague instructions, I'll do my best, but with mixed results.

But when I team up with someone who always has new ideas - I can actually sort through them, figure out which ones will work, which ones will meet the goals, and synthesize them into great product. Most people can't do that with their own ideas.

I think the original quote - and it's short, not a full essay, so this criticism is mildly unfair - elevates the innovator too much over the implementer. When in reality, you win when you have both, that know their own strengths and limitations, and are grateful for the other. I produce better work when I pair up with an innovator, and so does he or she. And the two of us will dominate over a dual-innovator team.

Also, realize implicitly in everything Paul Graham says, you can add the words, "For a startup technology company." That's what he knows, that's what he values. There's a lot of work out there that needs implementers, and innovators would be frustrated, unsuccessful, and miserable at. Don't feel threatened if you're not Paul Graham's Ideal Entrepreneur/Programmer. I'm not. I'll never be extremely rich, most likely, but I'm happy, good at my job, valued by my company. I say this because opinions like this caused me a _lot_ of self doubt in my early twenties, and they turned out to not be the accurate predictor of DOOM that I feared. If you're smart, and willing to do a good day's work, success is out there - not at a company run by someone like Graham, but he wouldn't have success at a company for you either.

dgallagher• 17 years ago

He was terribly frustrated he was like this guy who had all kinds of ideas, but he couldn't articulate them with his hand.

I've experienced this. Since several years ago I've had tons of idea's for startups I'd like to create. Problem was, I had a business/finance/network engineer background and had no way of actually building anything. It's extremely difficult being stuck like that. Ambitions are polluted by your own limitations.

Three years ago a few close friends and I decided to develop a video game using XNA for Xbox 360. We were three programmers, two artists, and myself who handled game design (not a coder). It was a simple game. Basically, you were a guy on a board with a bat and would melee with others, trying to knock them off the board. It was sorta like Nintendo Hockey crossed with Super Smash Brothers in a top-down 2D view. Long story short, the programmers lost interest and the project died after two years of part-time work. The two artists and I were more or less helpless in trying to finish the game, so we had to abandon it.

This was a year ago and I was frustrated. I came to the realization that in order to build something, you need to have the idea, and you need to have a means of building it. So I ordered a bunch of books and started to teach myself how to program. Thats enabled me to work on a new startup.

Now I can see things much clearer having the ability to write code. That frustration of not being able to build your ideas, or having their destiny out of your control, is completely gone. It's empowering. This quote really rings true to me now:

The best programmers are the ones that combine in one head both the ability to translate ideas into code and having the ideas. Just like the best artists have both the ability ... (have) a great hand.

lucifer• 17 years ago

If only hacker sketches on a napkin looked like this:

http://tinyurl.com/y9b5n2d

garnet7• 17 years ago

> When you put the stuff on the wall in a room full of other paintings, it looks like there's a spotlight shining on his paintings and other ones have been sprayed with a light coating of mud.

What is this due to? Cezanne's skill with color? Or something else?

Paul Graham On Two Kinds of Programmers and Painters

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