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PG's Rarely Asked Questions

paulgraham.com

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Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#11

Post by barry-cotter »

wallawe wrote: post #8
ofca wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am also fueled by his answer here. I guess that learning parameter depends on your teacher - the better the teacher, the better and faster you learn. I just started learning HTML, CSS, jQ, PHP recently , and I found myself advancing at surprisingly high pace (now watching jQ new_boston tutorials on youtube). Main problem for me is finding good material to learn from, since I only learn from the internet. You have a…

http://www.w3schools.com is pretty informative if you haven't already checked that out. The best thing to do, especially if you are on a budget is spend a few hours in a bookstore each week reading over various books on various subjects. I found this a lot more helpful.

I would recommend htmldog.com above w3schools for HTML and CSS. For javascript eloquentjavascript.net is good, and sqlzoo.net is good for SQL (or so I have heard). No doubt there are also some spectacular books for all of these. Please reply with recommendations.

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#12

Post by edanm »

_delirium wrote: post #10
edanm wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Note: he means "good enough", not good. Which brings to mind patio11's constant reminders, that running a successful software business has very very little to do with programming well. Which means that pg thinks that 6 months is the level you need to be at to be able to start a startup. This seems intuitively right to me, especially these days.

In fact the usual advice is that you shouldn't be doing something technically virtuosic in a startup. If your startup's critical path includes writing something as technically impressive as the Glasgow Haskell Compiler, you might have trouble... Though there are a few people around here who've built software businesses around things that are also nontrivial technical advances; cperciva comes to mind.

I know that's a sentiment that's thrown around here, but I think it's simplistic.

I live in Israel, where a very common path to an Exit is to build some sophisticated technology, then sell it after a few years to a larger company. So it is a very possible path you can take. It has its own advantages and disadvantages over the much more visible, much more HN-friendly, "Consumer Internet Startup".

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#13

Post by sthlm »

The pointy-haired boss is a manager who doesn't program. So the surest way to avoid becoming him is to stay a programmer. What tempts programmers to become managers are companies with old-fashioned corporate structure, where the only way to advance in salary and prestige is to go into management.

I have to disagree with that. I've met many people, especially in larger enterprises, who started in development but then became more abstract over time. They weren't bad people, in fact, they were excellent at their job.

Programming to me has never been something that has to be continually pursued in order to stay fluent or able, but merely something that reflects your more basic skills and talents.

It's like playing a musical instrument. Almost anyone can learn playing the guitar, but it takes a special talent to excel at it. For the guitar this requires hearing, sense of rhythm, and others; for programming, this is analytical thinking, systematic thinking, and more. Some people will try to program but never be really good at it. I studied with people like that. It's not their fault, their skills are just in another area. Some others are great at it. Once they learned, it doesn't matter if they don't develop anything for 3 years; after their break, they look at a piece of code / framework / technology, understand what it does, and continue programming.

And the traits that make you a good programmer help you in other fields, even management. Yes, large corporations have structures, but we need structure to manage them. And we need managers. And a manager who was a distinguished developer will be much better suited for leading a team of developers -- even if he doesn't program any longer. This is a valid career path, and an interesting one at that.

My general opinion is that if you want to stay a programmer, find yourself a role where you can do that. If not, don't bother pursuing programming at all costs. It won't lead you in the right direction.

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#14

Post by rwmj »

He's really wrong about LISP macros. Would suggest pg takes a look at camlp4.

Edit: maybe instead of downvotes, you could reply explaining what's wrong with this position. Or just look at camlp4 and see how it provides macros that are better (with a better underlying language) than LISP. And yes, I've written a LISP compiler.

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#15

Post by apgwoz »

Estragon wrote: post #5

> Couldn't you add something equivalent to Lisp macros to languages like > Perl or Python? > > Not without turning them into dialects of Lisp. Real macros need to > operate on the parse tree of the program. Actually, I've thought about porting some of On Lisp to python using lib2to3 ( http://docs.python.org/library/2to3.html ) It's probably an obscenely bad idea, but I keep getting drawn back to it...

How does 2to3 help you with this? If you intend to port macros, you're sort of out of luck in python.

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#16

Post by larrys »

"Two startups want to hire me. Which should I choose?

The one with the most determined and smartest founders (in that order) is the more likely to succeed. "

All else being equal this is true and it's good advice.

But unfortunately when you are choosing from two startups to work for all else is not equal.

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#17

Post by NY_Entrepreneur »

Nice. He covers several topics that would be good to have covered on some "What I wish my father had explained to me when I was 12, however, I've come to expect that mostly he didn't understand very well.". But among topics it would have been good to have had Dad cover, PG omits the biggie, especially for hackers, maybe for painters -- how to make an A in Women 101-102!

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#18

Post by larrys »

NY_Entrepreneur wrote: post #17

Nice. He covers several topics that would be good to have covered on some "What I wish my father had explained to me when I was 12, however, I've come to expect that mostly he didn't understand very well.". But among topics it would have been good to have had Dad cover, PG omits the biggie, especially for hackers, maybe for painters -- how to make an A in Women 101-102!

"how to make an A in Women 101-102!"

My initial reaction to this was to agree with the statement. And I still sort of do.

But I think women (or men) can be a big distraction if you are trying to create something. That being said the correct woman or men can help you achieve as well if the relationship is stable. The statement "behind every great man" there is a ... is basically true from my experience.

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#19

Post by yannis »

denisonwright wrote: post #2

Interesting, now that I think of it, I have never met someone (except pg) who is a painter and programmer. I've met several programmers who are writers, musicians, carpenters, etc, but never painters. I draw cartoons/caricatures (examples here: http://www.smileecards.com ) and have painted a few times, but I don't quite call myself a painter. About teachers, I totally agree that good teachers earn the respect of the…

I am a Mech Engineer with a passion for programming. I used to paint when I was a kid, but that was a long time ago. Now what I find interesting is that without having read the PG article, I tell people that I program using the water-color technique. I 'sketch' quickly the code and then go back and fill the 'colors' the small refinements for completion and over write a little bit. Now I know other people they code like Architects, have master plans draw out all the details and then code, perhaps Djikstra was one of them and then there are the oil painters (possibly Knuth's style). Reminds me of Michelangelo where he had a great vision but had a lot of assistants to fill some parts (think of all the Ph D students slaving away).

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#20

Post by siglesias »

Re: philosophy, I think understanding the difference between representing the world in language and representing it in logic is critically important to programmers. It has implications for natural language processing as well as artificial intelligence. I personally recommend to anyone endeavoring to understand Wittgenstein's transition from Tractatus Logico Philosophicus to Philosophical Investigations. In fact, Google used the family resemblance concept from PI to inform its search algorithm early on to attribute diffent meanings to the same search term.

What you take away is a very precise way to pose questions that make sense and to avoid questions that don't make sense.

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