One of the best things I've read in a long time. Paul Graham is God!
Paul Graham on Doing Things Right by Accident
71–80 of 95 posts
Re: Paul Graham on Doing Things Right by Accident
#72e-commerce was not my life’s work. I didn’t actually want to spend my life working on this. I did it to get money and make that money.
Aaron : Yeah. This is such an interesting thing because it’s so opposite from what you tell people a lot of the time, what YC tells people, certainly, of “Don’t do things just because there’s a business there,” right?
This is it, right here. If you want to know what most successful businesspeople have in common - not the unicorns - it's that they were prepared to sell their first venture and/or give away a lot of equity to the right people to make it work. Once they have the money, comnections and track record, they can have much more control in their next company.
We went a completely different route. We've tried to change the world... :)
Re: Paul Graham on Doing Things Right by Accident
#73luck = opportunity + preparedness
Re: Paul Graham on Doing Things Right by Accident
#74Earlier quoted context omitted.
Right?? I was sitting here reading this and going I cant be the only one thinking this guy is some sort of a narcissist. And all the ridiculous sycophancy of poeple here trying to infer secret wisdom in his uninspiring answers only makes the whole thing even more bizarre. Poverty is poverty only when you have no means to make your life better. Suffering form special snowflake syndrome is not poverty.
Which parts of the interview made you feel that he was narcissistic?
you mean other than the example in the parent comment?
Re: Paul Graham on Doing Things Right by Accident
#75It's amazing the lengths to which people will go to avoid Windows programming. I know I have :)
Re: Paul Graham on Doing Things Right by Accident
#76Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've heard this sentiment expressed for the creation of music and art as well.
Yep. You're just playing around with stuff, create a lot of drafts and play with them if you feel that they're fun. And then, suddenly, one of the drafts doesn't get dull; surprisingly, it gets more and more interesting the more things you add to it. And then you realize that this one is actually done.
Maybe, although in my experience a piece of work is never really done, you just eventually realize you have to declare a stopping point and move on to the next project.
A software's features could always be improved, a book can always be revised further, a song could always be tweaked or rearranged, you can always knock the sand castle down and try to make the parapets straighter this time.
Most of my projects have a wishlist of features, 80-90% of them eventually get cut when I decided I was finally, finally going to release the damn thing.
Re: Paul Graham on Doing Things Right by Accident
#77Off-topic but: Hooray for transcripts! I can see the benefits of being able to hear the pauses, tone, inflections, etc. but even leaving aside the deaf and hearing-impaired, there are so many advantages to having the text (it's searchable, you can read it while listening to music, it's quicker to read it than to listen to it).
Fun fact: The HTML5 video stuff has a Javascript API so that you can access the subtitle-data. This means if the subtitles are well-made, you can "re-generate" a searchable/seekable "transcript" from the same data.
Example: https://gist.github.com/DHager/2e01f0b82e5d3f5a39e6
Re: Paul Graham on Doing Things Right by Accident
#78Earlier quoted context omitted.
I've heard this sentiment expressed for the creation of music and art as well.
I'm a composer as well as a software developer. There is no way in hell I could plan an interesting piece of music. You really just have to wait for it to come, however importantly it does mean you have to be ready to listen: i.e. put yourself in environments and states of mind that are most receptive and be extremely well-honed on your craft on a technical level so you can execute well.
This reminds me of John Cleese’s [wonderful lecture on creativity](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qby0ed4aVpo). A rough [transcript](http://genius.com/John-cleese-lecture-on-creativity-annotate...).
Re: Paul Graham on Doing Things Right by Accident
#79Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe "frisson" is the word you are looking for.
It's the same thing. Though "gives me chills" is more common in English. I only knew "frisson" because I speak French, I'm not sure I've ever heard an English speaker use it. (until now)
I don't think frisson is that unusual, or that it means the same thing as "gives me the chills" -- the latter implies that you're frightened, IMO.
Re: Paul Graham on Doing Things Right by Accident
#80I can't believe one of the founders was doing this alongside grad school and PG was like yeah you know, you have a lot of spare time there. And here I got so much work with full time studying that I can barely finish reading a single book alongside. How can people say university is enjoyable, fun, lots of spare time? For me it's just endless hard work and barely any breaks inbetween.
Depends on what program you're in? In general I think grad school (esp. the PhD level compared to Master's) typically gives the student a lot of freedom. At the PhD level often you are basically an independent researcher and might meet with your advisor once every three weeks or so. If that were the case, and you could complete enough work to keep your advisor happy within one week, that gives you two weeks of time t…
> might meet with your advisor once every three weeks or so.
Only if your advisor is fairly senior (ie. Not pre-tenure)!