I still wonder why RTM doesn't say anything at all. Does he read HN? I would like to know his point of view, too.
Paul Graham: Six Principles for Making New Things
51–60 of 125 posts
Re: Paul Graham: Six Principles for Making New Things
#52I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly. I'm still trying to get a handle on which of these apply to Arc. Perhaps I'm looking at it the wrong way, but Arc feels a little light in areas (a-c).
Arc is a simple solution to the overlooked problem of core language design.
Re: Paul Graham: Six Principles for Making New Things
#53For more details, read the Innovator's Dilemma and Innovator's Solution.
Or if you have some time to kill, listen to the author's highly-rated talk on IT Conversations:
Re: Paul Graham: Six Principles for Making New Things
#54I enjoyed the article, as I enjoy most of Paul's articles. But, I'm coming to the tech world after having worked in the health care industry for 15 years. And, I studied art for 6-7 years, thinking that I could make a career out of it. So, I guess that I have a different perspective on the geek/hacker culture. And, something about hacker culture that never really set well with me was this--the nastiness. Paul referen…
Interesting angle, but I really don't believe nastiness has much to do with it. We hackers are just dying to let others know how smart we are. It's what makes us tick. So we come here (and other forums and blogs) because most of us have trouble finding peers who even understand what we're talking about. Add in a lack of writing style and the anonymity of the internet, and our puffing and strutting APPEARS to be nasti…
I hear what you're saying in terms of people not being able to write well, and that people are trying to beat their geeky chests in a sort of hacker bravado.
I also don't get a really nasty vibe from Hacker news, like I do on Reddit. I was referring to the Hacker culture at large when I was referring to "nastiness". I believe that there is a lot of bravado and competition in Geek culture. But there's also a lot of nastiness, too. In fact, we are developing the English language by devising new language for people being assholes online: griefing, trolling, powning, flames, flamewars, Greater Fuckwad Theory, Godwin's law, STFU, RTFM, STFW, etc... It's only a matter of time before these terms hit the mainstream to describe asshole behavior offline.
Even though he doesn't say it, I believe that Paul has been rather hurt about this often enough several of his last essays have referred to these people as "trolls". Steve Yegge has had enough problems with this, that he's turned comments off on most of his blogs. Pmarca also thinks that this is enough of a problem, that he (to my knowledge) never turned on comments on his blog.
For instance, I went to a boarding school for a year, and was in a dorm with 45 high school boys. There's friendly competition, and then there's getting 64 wedgies like I did that year. (I was the youngest kid in the school, and quite a nerd). A lot of time, putting your work into the intarweeb slipstream of geek/hacker culture is like walking around with your fruit-o-the-looms sticking 2 inches outside of your pants at a boarding school. It's only a matter of time before some asshole gives you a wedgy. And, then you have brown streaks.
My question is this: why do we (not Hacker News, but Geek culture in general) tolerate that behaviour? There is no need for it. If you want to prove how smart you are, make something cool. Or, explain String theory in a way that mere mortals can understand. But, walking around saying that Arc sux because of this and that, or Yegge is a wind bag, or what was J Gosling thinking when he designed the turd that Java is... This isn't productive.
If people make these comments maybe it's because their stakes are so low.
Re: Paul Graham: Six Principles for Making New Things
#55If you work on overlooked problems, you're more likely to discover new things, because you have less competition.
I'd like some help interpreting this sentence.
Why does the lack of competition make it more likely you'll discover new things? (And what is things referring to?)
I assume it means you can attack a problem at a more leisurely pace, so you see solutions you would have missed if you were in a feature-copying war with competitors. But I doubt PG would advocate running your startup leisurely.
Re: Paul Graham: Six Principles for Making New Things
#56Thanks, Paul! I always enjoy reading your insigts. Some of the best free advice around. You might find that my companies design philosphy (for some reason...) is similiar to yours!
www.ensigntech.com
Re: Paul Graham: Six Principles for Making New Things
#57If you work on overlooked problems, you're more likely to discover new things, because you have less competition. I'd like some help interpreting this sentence. Why does the lack of competition make it more likely you'll discover new things? (And what is things referring to?) I assume it means you can attack a problem at a more leisurely pace, so you see solutions you would have missed if you were in a feature-copyin…
From No Contest by Alfie Kohn:
"Robert L. Helmreich [tested] the relationship between achievement, on the one hand, and such traits as the orientation toward work, mastery (preference for challenging tasks), and competitiveness, on the other. A sample of 103 Ph.D. scientists were rated on these three factors based on a questionnaire. Achievement, meanwhile, was defined in terms of the number of times their work was cited by colleagues. The result was that "the most citations were obtained by those high on the work and mastery but low on the competitiveness scale."
This startled Helmreich, who did not expect that competitiveness would have deleterious effect. Could the result be a fluke? He conducted another study, this one involving academic psychologists. The result was the same. He did two more studies, one involving male businessmen, measuring achievement by their salaries, and the other with 1300 male and female undergraduates, using grade point average as the attainment criterion. In both cases he again found a significant negative correlation between competitiveness and achievement.
...
But Helmreich did not stop there. As of 1985, he had conducted three more studies. The first compared the standardized achievement tests of fifth- and sixth-graders to their competitiveness. They were negatively correlated. The second examined the relationship between performance of airline pilots and competitiveness. The relationship between the latter and superior performance was negative. The third looked at airline reservation agents and again found a negative correlation between performance and competitiveness.
...
Consider the question of artistic creativity. The little research that has been done suggests that competition is just as unhelpful here as it is in promoting creative problem-solving. In one study, seven- to eleven-year-old girls were asked to make "silly" collages, some competing for prizes and some not. Seven artists then independently rated their works on each of 23 dimensions. The result: "Those children who competed for prizes made collages that were significantly less creative than those made by children in the control group." Children in the competitive condition produced works thought to be less spontaneous, less complex, and less varied.
...
Consider journalism, a profession that, while no more competitive than many others, is worth exploring by virtue of its unusual visibility to outsiders. The frantic race for news generates terrific levels of anxiety ... on the part of journalists. Can we at least point to better reporting as the result of this competition? Setting reports against one another in a battle for space on the front page or the first block of a television news show probably lowers the quality of journalism in the long run, and so, too, does the contest among news organizations for subscriptions or ratings."
Re: Paul Graham: Six Principles for Making New Things
#58I like to find (a) simple solutions (b) to overlooked problems (c) that actually need to be solved, and (d) deliver them as informally as possible, (e) starting with a very crude version 1, then (f) iterating rapidly. I'm still trying to get a handle on which of these apply to Arc. Perhaps I'm looking at it the wrong way, but Arc feels a little light in areas (a-c).
Arc is a simple solution to the overlooked problem of core language design. http://www.paulgraham.com/core.html
In general, at this stage, the amount of flak that Arc has received is so disproportionate to the normal amount of flak that new ideas receive because it hasn't solved any problems that real hackers have encountered, well enough that they'd want to switch to writing programs in it. You haven't really solved the overlooked problem of core language design until people start using your cleaner core language, and to do that you'll have to give people compelling reasons to start using it. If you don't agree, the BeOS people have solved the overlooked problem of operating system design and are on their way to meet you, together with the people who invented Esperanto.
Re: Paul Graham: Six Principles for Making New Things
#59If you work on overlooked problems, you're more likely to discover new things, because you have less competition. I'd like some help interpreting this sentence. Why does the lack of competition make it more likely you'll discover new things? (And what is things referring to?) I assume it means you can attack a problem at a more leisurely pace, so you see solutions you would have missed if you were in a feature-copyin…
Why does the lack of competition make it more likely you'll discover new things? (And what is things referring to?)
Because if few are looking where you're looking, there's more chance that things you discover will be new.
By things I mean pretty much anything that could be the object of "discover", from mathematical concepts to narrative techniques.
Re: Paul Graham: Six Principles for Making New Things
#60If you work on overlooked problems, you're more likely to discover new things, because you have less competition. I'd like some help interpreting this sentence. Why does the lack of competition make it more likely you'll discover new things? (And what is things referring to?) I assume it means you can attack a problem at a more leisurely pace, so you see solutions you would have missed if you were in a feature-copyin…
Why does the lack of competition make it more likely you'll discover new things? (And what is things referring to?) Because if few are looking where you're looking, there's more chance that things you discover will be new. By things I mean pretty much anything that could be the object of "discover", from mathematical concepts to narrative techniques.
Oh, right – overlooked problems.