I’m sitting in the backyard, reacquainting myself with Paul Graham’s delightful book Hackers & Painters. I bought it a while ago, liked what I found in it, but set it aside before I finished it.
Graham is successful hacker who was part of a startup acquired by Yahoo. Good credentials on the programming side, but what about the painting part?
After his computer studies, Graham surprised his friends by taking painting classes. “Why?” they wondered. What’s the connection? The book makes it clear… hackers think and work more like painters and other makers of things than like scientists. Indeed, Graham dislikes the notion that there is any such thing as computer science, and he makes a convincing case. He says he gets more and better ideas from painting than he could by probing fields considered adjacent to computer hacking. It’s a matter of inspiration.
Along the way, we get first hand experiences with big company limitations, insights into the creative process and opinions on what and who makes great software. Hackers are artists, I have no doubt.
[I did this whole entry from my iPod, including the snapshot. What a pain!]