Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

PG's Rarely Asked Questions

paulgraham.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 221 posts

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#41

Post by marquis »

siglesias wrote: post #20

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, Goo…

I completely agree. I would also recommend reading books and watching films about philosophers, novels and plays written by philosophers that is intended to be read as a narrative , and especially conversations with philosophers. You get a feel about how they came about their conclusions - what I am interested in is how a certain idea was arrived at, and philosophy can really give you some great analytical tools.

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#42

Post by jcarden »

enko wrote: post #38
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.

> Which brings to mind patio11's constant reminders, that running a successful software business has very very little to do with programming well That may be appropriate for patio11. Not to demean the guy but let's be clear, he runs an online bingo service. It's my understanding that he makes much more money from consulting gigs leveraged from this modest endeavour. Rest assured that if your ambition is to write the…

What does "good" really mean here ?

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#43

Post by breck »

> The pointy-haired boss is a manager who doesn't program. So > the surest way to avoid becoming him is to stay a programmer.

I agree. One of the absolute worst pieces of advice I got over and over again was "don't go into programming. It's all being outsourced overseas anyway. Just learn how to manage programmers." Luckily for some reason I finally decided to ignore that advice and strive to become a great programmer myself. One of the, if not the, best decisions in my entire life.

Even now, although I certainly could become more of a "manager", I choose to stay in the pit coding. Although I now do tasks that can be called "managing" such as helping out other coders with their bugs and problems, mentoring, communicating with people outside of engineering, recruiting and interviewing, the biggest chunk of my time is spent programming and working on my skills.

It's worked for PG. It's worked for Paul Farmer(replace "programming" with "doctoring"). I'd bet it's worked for nearly every master of their field. I think it's an essential rule to follow.

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#44

Post by frisco »

dgreensp wrote: post #40

>I never had to manage anyone in our startup, even though I was the president. The other hackers were my peers, and would have given me the raspberry if I'd tried to "manage" them. We operated by consensus. And the rest of the company reported to our experienced COO, who was also more of a peer. Operating by consensus and not valuing the role of "manager" only goes so far. It may work when you're a few people living…

Are you saying that Google is anything other than one of the world's most wildly successful companies of the last decade?

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#45

Post by vegashacker »

chernevik wrote: post #37
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…

It has taken me considerably longer than a year. But I might not be smart. And I've tried to do it on my own, rather than taking a job (see prior sentence). Caveat: I'm not a developer, so my comments about learning how to program should be taken with considerable skepticism. But I have some opinions based my effort to learn. For me, programming syntax is less a problem for me than poorly organized code, poor grasp o…

"How to Design Programs" (http://htdp.org/) is aimed at beginners. I haven't read it, but the people behind it are top quality.

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#46

Post by sjtgraham »

frisco wrote: post #44
dgreensp wrote: post #40

>I never had to manage anyone in our startup, even though I was the president. The other hackers were my peers, and would have given me the raspberry if I'd tried to "manage" them. We operated by consensus. And the rest of the company reported to our experienced COO, who was also more of a peer. Operating by consensus and not valuing the role of "manager" only goes so far. It may work when you're a few people living…

Are you saying that Google is anything other than one of the world's most wildly successful companies of the last decade?

No, he is saying operating by consensus doesn't scale.

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#48

Post by portman »

zackattack wrote: post #22

If somebody compiles the history books into an Amazon shopping list, I would gladly use your affiliate link. I haven't read any of them, which is shameful.

http://www.amazon.com/Civilisation-Kenneth-Clark/dp/07195684...

http://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Technology-Social-Change-Whit...

http://www.amazon.com/Penguin-Atlas-Ancient-History-Hist/dp/...

http://www.amazon.com/New-Penguin-Atlas-Medieval-History/dp/...

http://www.amazon.com/World-We-Have-Lost-Explored/dp/0415315...

http://www.amazon.com/Extension-Man-History-Physics-Quantum/...

http://www.amazon.com/Autobiography-Benjamin-Franklin/dp/161...

http://www.amazon.com/Life-English-Country-House-Architectur...

http://www.amazon.com/Mohammed-Charlemagne-Henri-Pirenne/dp/...

http://www.amazon.com/Fall-Constantinople-1453-Canto/dp/0521...

http://www.amazon.com/Guns-Sails-Empires-Technological-Innov...

http://www.amazon.com/History-Rome-Origins-Roman-Historians/...

http://www.amazon.com/Art-War-Middle-Ages-378-1515/dp/080149...

http://www.amazon.com/Lives-Artists-Oxford-Worlds-Classics/d...

http://www.amazon.com/Golden-Trade-Moors-Kingdoms-Fourteenth...

http://www.amazon.com/Gallic-Wars-Caesars-Account-Conquest/d...

http://www.amazon.com/Copernican-Revolution-Planetary-Astron...

Note that about half of these are out of print.

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#49

Post by moomin »

Bertrand Russell's History of Western Philosophy is a great place to start. Of course, it's as much an introduction to his thinking as anyone else's, but it's accessible and thoughtful. Memorable for the phrase "existence is not a predicate".

Re: PG's Rarely Asked Questions

#50

Post by andreasvc »

dzuc wrote: post #21
siglesias wrote: post #20

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, Goo…

(I designed a nested version of the Tractatus if you're interested: http://tractatuslogico-philosophicus.com/ )

I spotted two mistakes:

it says somewhere "thought it need not be red"; should be "though".

Proposition 4.022 should be called 4.002, according to my edition and another edition on the web I checked.

Perhaps the Gutenberg edition you used is not as properly proofread as one would hope.

Mentioning the source on the site is probably a good idea, for those not inclined to open up the source and hunt for it.

Post reply on HN