"Hackers & Painters" Book Writeup
October 27, 2010
What’s the point? This book is a collection of essays on a wide variety of topics by Paul Graham, of Lisp and Y-Combinator fame. There is a mixture of technical topics and social/psychology topics; almost every section will leave you thinking.
How was it? I have read a few of PG’s essays, so I also enjoyed the book. I found it to be similar to Joel on Software, in that is is a collection of bite-sized chunks and was pretty easy to read. While I didn’t really learn that much about actual programming (I haven’t been converted to Lisp…), there were some interesting sections about software that made me think about things in a new way. PG is a great essayist and I enjoy reading about “hacker culture”.
Who should read it? If you read Hacker News, you will like this book…but then again, if you read Hacker News you have probably already read it. If you have no idea what that sentence is talking about, maybe this isn’t the book for you.
Notes: I read this book on my Kindle, no issues.