Short Review

Hackers & Painters
   Big Ideas from the Computer Age
By Paul Graham
May 2004
ISBN: 0-596-00662-4
271 pages, $22.95 US, $33.95 CA, £15.95 UK

a very good book. :) :) :) :) of 5

In this book, the author views hackers (i.e. programmers who create imaginative solutions) as makers like painters, architects and composers. The book consists of 15 short essays (from 7 to 31 pages long) on important topics related to the computer age.

If you find at least two of the following questions intriguing, I suggest getting this book:

• Why are nerds unpopular?
• How are hackers and painters similar?
• How can you tell what it's dangerous to say?
• How is wealth created?

This book is provocative and you're likely to find your mind ablaze with ideas if you engage with it.

I've also written a longer review, but I'm not sure where I'll put it. It ends: "This book engages with some particularly important ideas involving hackers and the world we live in. You do live in this world, right? If so, read this book."

George Woolley of Camelot.pm and Oakland.pm

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Miscellaneous

Chapter Titles

1. Why Nerds Are Unpopular
2. Hackers and Painters
3. What You Can't Say
4. Good Bad Attitude
5. The Other Road Ahead
6. How to Make Wealth
7. Mind the Gap
8. A Plan for Spam
9. Taste for Makers
10. Programming Languages Explained
11. The Hundred-Year Language
12. Beating the Averages
13. Revenge of the Nerds
14. The Dream Language
15. Design and Research

Notes:

• See the section on "Questions" for some of the questions addressed in these chapters.
• See the O'Reilly catalog entry for the full table of contents.
• There's also:
  • a glossary of terms used.
  • an interesting set of notes
  • an index which I found quite useful while I was doing this review.

Some Fun Stuff

This book contains, among other things:

• a 1977 mug shot of Bill Gates provided by the Albuquerque police department
• a section devoted to the "Blub Paradox"
• two intentionally circular definitions (in the glossary)

Notes:

• My point? The book has a lighter side.
• Also, fun is fun.

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Somewhat Longer Review

Contents

• The Title
• About the Reviewer
• Questions
• Answers
• Grumbles
• Who Is the Book for?
• Final Thoughts

Note:

• Published by O'Reilly.

The Title

hackers: There are two senses of the word hacker. One sense means one who produces imaginative solutions to problems in some domain (especially computer software) and sometimes breaks some set of rules in the process. This is the meaning that the title is primarily referring to.

Another sense of the word hacker is a person who breaks into computers. Note that both these types of hackers break rules.

painters: "Painters" in the title is referring to artists like Leonardo da Vinci and Michelangelo.

&: The "&" in the title is intended to suggest a close relationship between hackers and painters. More specifically hackers like painters (and architects and composers, ...) are makers.

the subtitle: The subtitle is "BIG IDEAS FROM THE COMPUTER AGE".

what expectations are created?: I'd say it would be reasonable to expect that the similarities between hackers and painters would be made clear and that hackers would be viewed as artists throughout the book.

Based on the subtitle, I'd say one could reasonably expect that a number of important ideas would be explored that are important in the current age (or more specifically, the computer age).

are the expectations met?: Yes.

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About the Reviewer

The following snipets about me and my views may be useful in interpreting this review.

artists: I think of myself as an artist. Though I've made my living mostly as a programmer, I think of myself more as an author of programs, websites, stories, ...

economics: I don't believe that there is a fixed amount of wealth. But it's not obvious to me that people are noticeably happier than 50 years ago. If that is a correct observation, then, perhaps, we have not created an extraordinary amount of net wealth in that time.

Certainly our worth has greatly increased in monetary terms. Perhaps money is an extremely poor measure of wealth. That is my opinion.

IMO, once basic needs have been met, wealth is primarily a matter of comparison.

In my view, our political system is dominated by money. Most of the money comes from corporations and people who have a lot of money. As far as I can tell, representation is very uneven.

games: In one of my views, the world consists of many different games on overlapping playing fields. Two games can be

• incompatible
• irrelevant to each other
• or even support each other

I'm somewhat disappointed to see how comfortable people are destroying other people's playing fields.

happiness: I've lived for a lot of years. There's been all manner of "progress" in those years but I haven't noticed that people are getting happier (or more ethical).

languages: I learned to program while working on a linguistics research project when I was in college. I've made my living as a programmer ever since.

I've made significant use of over 20 different programming languages. These have ranged from several assembly languages to a number of higher level languages. I started using Perl in 1994 and it has been my favorite language ever since. Before that there was never a widely used language that I had a strong affinity to.

politics: Representation is more important to me than democracy.

postmodernism: I'm a cultural postmodernist in roughly the sense that Larry Wall describes in Perl, the first postmodern computer language. Some of my thoughts on this essay are in my review of it.

I'm skeptical of modernism and progress. Then, again, I'm skeptical of cultural postmodernism. But at least it's not violent and boring.

progress: I think what we generally call "progress" is vastly overrated.

school: I had a tough time when I was in second grade when I went to parochial school. All the boys in my class except one wanted to fight with me at recess. I had and have no idea what that was about.

In public school, on the other hand, I felt accepted and was not picked on or treated meanly. As well as being a geek and a nerd, I was good athlete; perhaps that made me more acceptable.

taboos: My major when I was in college was philosophy. I'm fascinated by the radically different ways people view things and by what they are blind to.

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Questions

IMO, this book is worth it just for the questions addressed. Especially, if it encourages you to ask questions of your own.

Here's some of the questions asked explicitly or implicitly:

• Why are nerds unpopular? (1)
• How are hackers and painters similar? (2)
• Are hackers computer scientists? (2)
• Are hackers software engineers? (2)
• How can you tell what it's dangerous to say? (3)
• Why is breaking rules important? (4)
• Why are hackers so concerned with civil liberties? (4)
• Will Microsoft be able to use the desktop to control the next generation of software? (5)
• What are the advantages of web-based software? (5)
• Where does wealth come from? (6)
• How can you create wealth? (6)
• Are large discrepancies in wealth a good thing? (7)
• How can spam be stopped? (8)
• Is beauty of design subjective? (9)
• What makes a good language? (10)
• What will languages be like in 100 years? (11)
• Are some languages more powerful than others?(12)
• What makes Lisp the best language? (12)
• Why doesn't everyone use Lisp? (12)
• How is Lisp different from other languages? (13)
• What makes a language popular? (14)
• What would a dream language be like? (14)
• What's the difference between design and research? (15)

Note:

• The number in parens after each question is the chapter where the author addresses the question.
• In the questions above, "language" means "programming language".

The answers that the author gives as well as being answers help to clarify the questions.

The answer the author gives to the question:

• How can you tell what it's dangerous to say? (3)

could be summarized by a further list of questions representing thought experiments. Some of the questions might be:

• Do you have any opinions that you would be reluctant to express in front of a group of your peers? (3)
• What do people get in trouble for saying? (3)
• What is heresy (un-American, etc.) to say? (3)
• What ideas from the past are people shocked by? (3)
• What ideas from other countries are people shocked by? (3)

The above list is both incomplete and simplified.

Such experiments are fascinating and useful. Worth trying.

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Answers

My own view is that the author's questions (explicit and implicit) are more important than his answers. But the answers help to flesh out the questions. And the answers are well presented and worth engaging with in any case.

what's it dangerous to say? (3): The author gives concrete ways to seek answers to this question. Some of the questions that one might ask oneself while following these concrete ways were listed in the previous section of this review.

One can apply what one learns from the author regarding this to all sorts of things. One can even apply what one learns to this book.

Just for the fun of it, I'll apply one of Graham's tests to help me determine if there is a taboo against questioning capitalism. Would I question capitalism in front of a group of my peers? Not unless I wished to be labeled crazy, stupid and un-American. Not unless I wanted my views on other matters to be discounted. So, perhaps there's a taboo at work here. Actually, I'd be cautious about even asking "Is there a taboo against questioning capitalism?".

why are nerds unpopular? (1): The chapter in which the author addresses this question is fascinating.

Here's my crude summary of the author's explanation of why. The primary function of American secondary schools is to warehouse young adolescents. American secondary schools are basically prisons. The main activity of most of the inmates is to strive for popularity. It's a full time job and they are really good at it. Nerds may wish to be popular, but there are other things more important to them and so they don't do well at being popular. Nerds are near the bottom of the social hierarchy. Kids at the next level up often torment nerds because they can or to distance themselves from the nerds.

This summary doesn't measure up to Graham's words. I found myself mildly depressed after reading what he wrote on this. If Graham's view is correct, we've got serious problems. (But, perhaps, you already thought that.)

Graham's description of what goes on in American secondary schools doesn't fit my experience. But I went to school in a different (earlier) period than the author. And, perhaps more important, as nerdy and geeky as I was, I was a good athlete which may have shielded me.

so what?: Well that's just a glimpse of parts of 2 of the 15 chapters. Right or wrong, I found the author's answers thought provoking.

Oh, by the way, some of the insights are more closely related to computer software than the above, especially later in the book.

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Grumbles

Here's two grumbles I had re this book that I thought were interesting.

artists: I would have appreciated the author delving more deeply into what an artist is. What is it to be an artist? Is there anything that distinguishes most artists from most hackers besides the medium of expression? If so, what, if anything, is implied by that?

economics: I'm not convinced by the economic theories that some of Graham's views are based on. Since some of his answers depend to some extent on these theories, that was mildly annoying to me. But I don't think most readers (in the US, anyway) will be similarly bothered.

about my grumbles: I have many more grumbles, but IMO none of my grumbles should deter you from reading this book.

Who Is The Book for?

I'd say, all adults who can read. Well, anyone who can stomach this review, anyway. And maybe some who can't; but if you're still reading this, probably that doesn't include you.

I guess there are two groups of people I wouldn't recommend this book for.

• people who don't have any time for reading such books (However, this book is short and divided into 15 self-contained chapters.)
• people who aren't up for identifying "sacred cows" and engaging with the kinds of questions the author engages with

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Final Thoughts

This book engages with some particularly important ideas involving hackers and the world we live in. You do live in this world, right? If so, read this book.

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