HACKERS & PAINTERS - Big Ideas from the Computer Age - PAUL GRAHAM Paperback: 272 pages Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (May 1, 2010) Language: English Note to readers The chapters are all independent of one another, so you don’t have to read them in order, and you can skip any that bore you. If you come across a technical term you don’t know, take a look in the Glossary, or in Chapter 10, which explains a lot of the concepts underlying software. We regret to inform readers that, after reading Chapter 5, Microsoft’s PR firm were unable to grant us permission to reproduce any of their photographs of Bill Gates. We thank the Albuquerque Police Department for the substitute reproduced on page 86. Contents preface ix 1. Why Nerds Are Unpopular 1 Their minds are not on the game. 2. Hackers and Painters 18 Hackers are makers, like painters or architects or writers. 3. What You Can’t Say 34 How to think heretical thoughts and what to do with them. 4. Good Bad Attitude 50 Like Americans, hackers win by breaking rules. 5. The Other Road Ahead 56 Web-based software offers the biggest opportunity since the arrival of the microcomputer. 6. How to Make Wealth 87 The best way to get rich is to create wealth. And startups are the best way to do that. 7. Mind the Gap 109 Could “unequal income distribution” be less of a problem than we think? 8. A Plan for Spam 121 Till recently most experts thought spam filtering wouldn’t work. This proposal changed their minds. 9. Taste for Makers 130 How do you make great things? 10. Programming Languages Explained 146 What a programming language is and why they are a hot topic now. 11. The Hundred-Year Language 155 How will we program in a hundred years? Why not start now? 12. Beating the Averages 169 For web-based applications you can use whatever language you want. So can your competitors. 13. Revenge of the Nerds 181 In technology, “industry best practice” is a recipe for losing. 14. The Dream Language 200 A good programming language is one that lets hackers have their way with it. 15. Design and Research 216 Research has to be original. Design has to be good. notes 223 acknowledgments 237 image credits 239 glossary 241 index 251 Preface This book is an attempt to explain to the world at large what goes on in the world of computers. So it’s not just for programmers. For example, Chapter 6 is about how to get rich. I believe this is a topic of general interest. You may have noticed that a lot of the people getting rich in the last thirty years have been programmers. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison. Why? Why programmers, rather than civil engineers or photographers or actuaries? “How to Make Wealth” explains why. Themoney in software is one instance of a more general trend, and that trend is the theme of this book. This is the Computer Age. It was supposed to be the Space Age, or the Atomic Age. But those were just names invented by PR people. Computers have had far more effect on the form of our lives than space travel or nuclear technology. Everything around us is turning into computers. Your typewriter is gone, replaced by a computer. Your phone has turned into one. So has your camera. Soon your TV will. Your car has more processing power in it than a room-sized mainframe had in 1970. Letters, encyclopedias, newspapers, and even your local store are being replaced by the Internet. So if you want to understand where we are, and where we’re going, it will help if you understand what’s going on inside the heads of hackers. Hackers? Aren’t those the people who break into computers? Among outsiders, that’swhat thewordmeans. Butwithin the computer world, expert programmers refer to themselves as hackers. And since the purpose of this book is to explain how things really are in our world, I decided it was worth the risk to use the words we use. The earlier chapters answer questions we have probably all thought about. What makes a startup succeed? Will technology create a gap between thosewho understand it and those who don’t? What do programmers do? Why do kids who can’t master high school end up as some of the most powerful people in the world? Will Microsoft take over the Internet? What to do about spam? Several later chapters are about something most people outside the computer world haven’t thought about: programming languages. Why should you care about programming languages? Because if you want to understand hacking, this is the thread to follow—just as, if you wanted to understand the technology of 1880, steam engines were the thread to follow. Computer programs are all just text. And the language you choose determines what you can say. Programming languages are what programmers think in. Naturally, this has a big effect on the kind of thoughts they have. And you can see it in the software they write. Orbitz, the travel web site, managed to break into a market dominated by two very formidable competitors: Sabre, who owned electronic reservations for decades, andMicrosoft. How on earth did Orbitz pull this off? Largely by using a better programming language. Programmers tend to be divided into tribes by the languages they use. More even than by the kinds of programs they write. And so it’s considered bad manners to say that one language is better than another. But no language designer can afford to believe this polite fiction. What I have to say about programming languages may upset a lot of people, but I think there is no better way to understand hacking. Some might wonder about “What You Can’t Say” (Chapter 3). What does that have to do with computers? The fact is, hackers are obsessed with free speech. Slashdot, the New York Times of hacking, has a whole section about it. I think most Slashdot readers take this for granted. But Plane & Pilot doesn’t have a section about free speech. Whydo hackers care so much about free speech? Partly, I think, because innovation is so important in software, and innovation and heresy are practically the same thing. Good hackers develop a habit of questioning everything. You have to when you work on machines made of words that are as complex as a mechanical watch and a thousand times the size. But I think that misfits and iconoclasts are also more likely to become hackers. The computer world is like an intellectual Wild West, where you can think anything you want, if you’re willing to risk the consequences. And this book, if I’ve done what I intended, is an intellectual Western. I wouldn’t want you to read it in a spirit of duty, thinking, “Well, these nerds do seem to be taking over the world. I suppose I’d better understand what they’re doing, so I’m not blindsided by whatever they cook up next.” If you like ideas, this book ought to be fun. Though hackers generally look dull on the outside, the insides of their heads are surprisingly interesting places. Cambridge, Massachusetts April 2004