
This is what happens when one guy practices art every day for nine years - sadiq
http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=870
======
markerdmann
The site seems to be under a lot of load. In case anyone (like me) is having
trouble viewing the images, I wrote a quick script to scrape the images:

<https://s3.amazonaws.com/markerdmann.com/paintings.tar>

The naming format is "page_X_image_X.jpg".

EDIT:

Here's a video slideshow of the images:

<https://s3.amazonaws.com/markerdmann.com/Paintings.mov>
<http://vimeo.com/29510470>

~~~
blots
This video illustrates his progress much better then the original thread.

Could you do the same thing for this guy:
<http://conceptart.org/forums/showthread.php?t=114449>

~~~
markerdmann
Here's the result of running the same script for that thread:

<https://s3.amazonaws.com/markerdmann.com/algenpfleger.mov>

<http://vimeo.com/29565241>

<https://s3.amazonaws.com/markerdmann.com/algenplfeger.tar>

------
texel
This is fascinating. I think a really interesting project for someone (other
than me) would be to collect each image, and have a whole bunch of people rate
each one on a subjective scale from, let's say, 1 to 100. Then, draw a scatter
plot of the ratings against time. I wonder what curves might show up? I also
wonder whether there are any other datasets that might be used to determine if
there's any common thread between learning processes like this.

------
larve
I've started something similar 1.5 years ago, but with drawing, as painting is
not really my thing (maybe it will). It is kind of my concept that to learn
any skill/art/job/whatever, you have to want it really really hard,
copy/copy/copy/copy the masters, and not judge yourself at all while doing it.
I think that's one of the big reasons that kids learn so fast, they want it,
they have no apprehension whatsoever about what they are doing, and very
importantly too, nobody tells them anything about the quality of the stuff
they do, while with adults it's all to easy to get nervous about not being
good, or being too good, or whatever.

I didn't capture my output all to regularly, but I filled about 18 notebooks
(that's about 3000-4000 pages) + a shitload of drawings. Because I never keep
anything I produce, it's hard to measure, but I think I did an additional 500
drawings on different media. My very early stuff is at:
<http://flipflipflop.tumblr.com/archive/2010/5> , in fact the very first
picture I drew when I set out to do this. Please note that a lot of stuff that
looks "good" is copied from somewhere on the internet.

I joined a local figure drawing class, but that's about all the "formal"
training I got. I read about 80 books from the library though, got a lot from
the internet, followed a lot of lectures from TAD, etc...

Here is stuff that I do currently: <http://larvecode.tumblr.com/>

The journey is super cool, and my ideas kind of seem to come together as well.

~~~
kerryfalk
I personally didn't take formal training until several years into my drawing
and even then it's wasn't great training (High school art class).

Although I'm sure it helps I personally have always found that I learn far
more by just spending more time bashing my head against the wall trying to do
it myself. The trick is to just do it a _lot_ and don't ever give up.
Eventually it works.

I like your new stuff, interesting style.

I agree wholeheartedly that to learn a skill and do it well you have to really
want it and spend a lot of time doing it.

I really wanted to be an artist when I was 8 through about 16. I stopped
drawing cold turkey and didn't keep anything I drew but I did end up drawing
two things in the last twelve years (!). The lessons I took from learning how
to draw were invaluable though. You can learn anything you want as long as you
a) really want it; and b) bash your head against the wall long enough to
achieve it.

Here are the two drawings I mentioned:
[http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.17270830489.47657.6...](http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.17270830489.47657.635750489&l=f005e0ee23&type=1)

After not picking up a pencil for half a decade for the first one I was fairly
happy with the result.

Good luck on your journey.

~~~
larve
Nice ones :)

The thing that annoys me about this hacker / painter stuff is that it really
boils down to: do something with passion, and you will discover unknown
depths, whatever the field may be. That's pretty much where every comparison
stops.

Recipe to learn a new skill:

1) get the book called "the art of XXX", written by someone who has been doing
XXX for the last 60 years, and which has good typography (no shit)

2) skip the intro and first chapter, which is almost always "XXX has taught me
a new way to see the world, XXX is a way of life, blablabla"

3) do the exercises that seem incredibly futile in the second chapter, and do
them over and over and over and over all your career. In music, that's your
scales / hitting just one note deliberately / tempo exercises (I studied jazz
bass), in drawing its those shading exercises and figure drawing or just
hatching that you can see the guy in the mentioned thread doing over and over
(cast drawing / painting). That's stuff you still see masters doing after 60
years. They don't do the crazy fancy whizzbang stuff, they practice pretty
much what the beginner has to practice on the first day. Also, it's almost
always something very physical, not mind-related. My only real comparison in
programming would be: "practice typing", but that only helps for the first few
months I guess. After that, more like having a routine of learning new things
or practicing existing data structures or so.

4) do it and do it and do it and never worry about finding your own voice or
not being good enough or being better than someone else or having envy or
getting frustrated. Just do it and when you don't feel like it then at least
do the boring exercise stuff and then go out and enjoy the sun or something.

that's it. nothing magical to it. no silver bullet. don't buy the expensive
guitar, go for the one that keeps in tune and the amp that doesn't distort. go
for the ballpoint pen. you will know when the expensive tool is right when you
know it's right.

~~~
josephg
> 3) do the exercises that seem incredibly futile in the second chapter, and
> do them over and over and over and over all your career.

I got halfway through that paragraph thinking it was crap because it didn't
apply to programming, then realised that you're absolutely right.

In programming, the thing we do every day is we write tiny algorithms to do
simple things. The abstractions come and go, but the simple "I need to remove
a trailing slash on this string" sort of problems are (to me) the everyday
practices. Everything else falls out of those little problems - the need for
abstraction, the need for tools, the need for tests, the need for libraries,
etc.

Imagine I offer you two applicants. They're both fresh out of collage applying
for an engineering role. The first one has never heard of MVC and has never
actually used TDD. But you ask him to implement a binary search on a
whiteboard and he goes to town. The other one will happily explain all the
details of the visitor pattern, but when you ask him to manually reverse a
string in his favorite language, he can't do it.

I don't know about you, but I'd hire the first programmer in a heartbeat. Its
much easier to learn design patterns when you know how to code than the other
way around. Maybe its the same with shading in art, and scales in music. But,
thats definitely how it works with programming.

------
artursapek
Very impressive stuff. His work is reminiscent of some of the best stuff I see
in my charcoal classes at RISD.

A very important thing worth noting is he switched from mostly digital art to
completely traditional; there is just no matching with a tablet/mouse what one
can do with real materials.

~~~
williamcotton
All of the life drawings, anatomy lessons, and lighting studies were
incredibly important. He was able to easily apply these understandings to a
new medium, so by the time he switched over he quickly excelled. I feel that
if he'd started earlier with paint he would have blasted off once he saw the
impact of his own work.

I appreciate this from a technical standpoint. It sort of shows the "man
behind the curtain" of creating two dimensional visual art pieces, especially
because you can see it in such a condensed format. We've all seen progressions
of an artists body of work in art publications and curated shows, but what
makes this rewarding is we get to see all of the early, average attempts. It's
not like we could pick up a book on Picasso and see his first 2000 drawings,
but if we could, we would gain the instructive aspects of watching an artist
progress.

------
Corrado
Check out his website[1] for quicker loading examples of his more recent work.

[1]<http://www.jonathanhardesty.com/>

------
nzjames
This reminds me a lot of Penny Arcade, I started reading it 10 years ago for
the video game commentary but I've really enjoyed watching the quality of the
writing and comics improve to such a world class level over time.

~~~
trafficlight
Reading that first year of Penny Arcade is night and day from the material
they put out now.

~~~
masklinn
This is not uncommon in comics all over the world. There are also a number of
mangas exposing this evolution of the artist, two of the most flagrant ones
are Kazushi Hagiwara's Bastard!! and Kentaro Miura's Berserk.

------
mortenjorck
This is basically how I learned one of my great loves, composing music.

Ten years ago, I was goofing around with an old copy of Cakewalk and clumsily
aping elements of cinematic soundtracks in General Midi with a keyboard at my
parents' house. I just kept at it, though, observing how the pieces worked
together in music I liked, developing an ear for harmony, composing lots of
throwaway stuff and a few occasional good ones. Over the years, I acquired a
bit of synth hardware, took a tiny bit of music in college, later moved from
hardware to soft synths, picked up bits of music theory and sound engineering,
and never stopped making things (at least for long). I still don't consider
myself a master by any means, but I enjoy what I compose. Perhaps most
importantly, it's a creative process I find incredibly rewarding, even if I'm
not scoring any indie games or films.

------
forkrulassail
"Nothing in this world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not;
nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not;
unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full
of educated derelicts.

Persistence and determination alone are omnipotent.

The slogan 'Press On" has solved and always will solve the problems of the
human race. ~ C Coolidge

~~~
gnosis
I've read many quotes by a variety of famous people about persistence (see
below). But none of them have had a tenth of the impact of seeing this
artist's 9 year effort compressed in to a 17 minute slideshow. What he has
achieved, how far he's had to travel, how hard he must have had to work, and
how persistent he clearly was is nothing short of inspiring.

\----

 _"Godlike genius.. Godlike nothing! Sticking to it is the genius! I've failed
my way to success."_ \--Thomas Edison

 _"What I had that others didn't was a capacity for sticking to it."_ \--
Doris Lessing

 _"Let me tell you the secret that has led me to my goal. My strength lives
solely in my tenacity."_ \-- Louis Pasteur

 _"enough shovels of earth, a mountain. enough pails of water, a river"_ \--
chinese proverb

~~~
SHIFTHAPPENZ
"It's not that I'm so smart, it's just that I stay with problems longer." -
Albert Einstein

Y'all right, only I just don't have the energy. I say. But maybe I have. You
know, it sounds great to be a good painter (or musician or stuff) but then you
(at least me) ends with "how is this worth the energy spend, isn't everything
irrelevant in the end? why would i care? it is not relevant."

Sometimes i conclude that the only goal of being a good xyz is to be admired
by others. If it wouldn't be for others then it would be for me. But, say,
when i was the last man on earth, would i say "yeah, 40 years of painting
every day.. i'm good now, that was worth it"... Would I?

Working on my skills just to get better would lead me to the (maybe right)
feeling that I am better than others, making me looking down on others. I
really don't want end up looking down to others (and envy those who are better
than me). Can someone understand me?

I read the forum that the artist was really frustrated often. I know that. Is
everything really worth the hassle? :/

------
jaredsohn
Interestingly, he's pretty close to (but still under) the ten year mark for
getting mastery that Peter Norvig wrote about in an essay about mastering
programming. (<http://norvig.com/21-days.html>).

(This was before the rule changed to 10,000 hours.) It could be interesting
for someone more knowledgable about art to indicate at what point he hit
'mastery' (assuming that has already happened) and to then estimate how many
hours it took him to get there.

~~~
Vivtek
From my standpoint looking at his current work, he's definitely at mastery.

~~~
sliverstorm
Maybe compared to your personal skills, but do you really think he is a
_master_ painter now? Not to criticize his work in any way, but I was always
under the impression _mastering_ a fine art was essentially a life's work.

~~~
derefr
If you want to be _completely_ pedantic about it, a _master craftsmen_ is
simply a person who has created, and successfully defended, a _masterpiece_
(basically the medieval craft/trade-guild equivalent to a, well, Master's
thesis.) This happened pretty early in life (you didn't enter a guild in full
good standing until you became a master), so an arbitrarily-selected "master"
wouldn't be nearly as experienced/talented as the few that come to mind when
you think of the term.

------
Su-Shee
This is so immensely interesting and useful what the guy documented here...
and thanks to Mark Erdmann, it's perfectly illustrated.

What you really see here is not just "his progress" but how he actually did
it:

* He went back to the classics (greek statues, classic poses, perspective etc) to really learn the ropes

* he practiced over and over again, often the same subject again and again

* even if his taste seems to lie with those scifi/fantasy-style figures, he nevertheless trained to sketch poses, the human body, faces, muscles and so on

* his strokes become more confident year by year

* he needs less strokes on a sketch to make the viewer see something recognizable

* he judges his work repeatedly

* he lived with being a beginner for quite some time but didn't give up

If some of you might remember Douglas Crockford's JavaScript lessons series -
he stressed the "knowing the history" quite a lot - quite similar to many "how
to become a great developer" howtos stress to know a language like Lisp.
(Basically our version of "learning the classics"...)

The same applies btw for what writers documented about their progress and
journey to become good writers: "know the classics" and "do it every day".

For the folks interested in the science side of "becoming an expert", please
consider Ericsson's "Expert Performance" (Cambridge University Press) - that's
the source/foundation of the notion of "a decade" and the "10000 hours of
deliberate practice" comes from. (And a very interesting read...)

------
fgsgdsfg
Can someone convert this into a readable format?

The image hosting appears to be spotty, it's on a message board, it's
paginated, the dates are unclear, there are now hundreds of comments
congratulating the guy, etc. etc. etc.

~~~
jgmmo
TL;DR Guy is impressed by painters (and it sounded like a family member that
was a painter too) so without any kind of art training he decided he wanted to
learn the craft. He decided to make one new piece of art per day, and
sometimes 2 per day on weekends. If you look at his first few pages of posts
you see the 3d cube drawings he started with while he learned how to sketch
and whatnot, and then skip to like page 50 which is years and years later you
will see these masterful portraits of his wife, jugs of wine and grapes, all
kinds of stuff. Apparently now he is a fulltime artist and doing the best he's
ever done despite the economic climate.

Also, you might want to disable flash on this forum it's posted on. Flashblock
chrome extension is nice to have in this kind of situation.

------
jgmmo
Pretty impressive. Just keeps pounding the 10,000 hrs rule into my head. I
need to make a program a day for 9 years.

~~~
bbq
Indeed. It's all too easy (for me) to fall off the horse and all too hard to
get back on.

~~~
maxogden
<http://calendaraboutnothing.com/> is a neat tool for staying motivated

------
pheaduch
There are internal and external roadblocks when trying to learn a new skill as
an adult and sadly both become reinforcing. Externally I think there's a lot
of cynicism from other people wondering why you are bothering trying to learn
something new as an adult. They doubt that you can do it for various reasons
including the favorite that you're too old to learn and that you must have
started when you were five because the brain is so ripe.

But I always thought that belief was illogical, especially if you believe
learning itself is an actual skill. If learning is a skill as much as say
drawing, then you should only become better at trying new things as you get
older.

------
bootload
Atelier.

I had to look that up. Turns out it's French for _"artist workshop"_. [0] Why
not just use the plain English equivalent? But that's not what was
interesting. Digging around I noticed <http://www.classicalartonline.com> Did
everyone miss this?

Making a dollar in art is difficult. It's so difficult that markets exist to
make art to order, to solve some problem. Usually selling a product.
Advertising. This really isn't art but design. Fine art doesn't solve any
problem other than the artists own. As a result, fine art can be an acquired
taste and difficult to sell. So how would you go about making a business
online with fine art? That was an idea pg had and became _"The Artix Phase"_
[1] before Viaweb. Art galleries online. At the time the idea didn't work.

That's what makes _"classical art online"_ interesting. Learning art online
would be difficult though. A lot of the learning happens as a tutor looks over
your shoulder, sees the result & makes suggestions in technique, subject and a
multitude of other related tasks that make up the craft. The learning happens
in the dynamic of pupil, tutor. It's personal and I don't know how you make
this process scale without a tutors presence.

[0] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atelier>

[1] <http://www.paulgraham.com/bronze.html>

~~~
adamzochowski
But atelier is already a perfect valid English word. Sure, it came from
French, but it is now part of English language. Complaining about it would be
like complaining that word 'Robot' is a Czech word for work/worker.

~~~
bootload
_"... Display of superior knowledge is as great a vulgarity as display of
superior wealth — greater indeed, inasmuch as knowledge should tend more
definitely than wealth towards discretion and good manners. ..."_ [0]

Perfectly valid Adam, but clearer if you use a simpler non-romantic, common
use replacement. The objective is to communicate, not impress.

[0] Fowler,
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dictionary_of_Modern_English_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Dictionary_of_Modern_English_Usage#Quotations)

~~~
cubicle67
I think the flawed assumption you're making here is that because the word is
new to you the motivation behind the author using it is to impress. It's
entirely possible that this is a word well known and in standard usage within
the original target audience (which is not us)

~~~
bootload
_"... It's entirely possible that this is a word well known and in standard
usage within the original target audience (which is not us) ..."_

 _'Us'_ , isn't _'me'_ who does come from a fine/technical art background.

The distinction is subtle. If the writer means train artists with zeal then
_'Atelier Method'_ would be the correct term but Atelier as a place to work? I
would have thought _"studio"_ would have been a better choice, derived from
Italian, "studio" and Latin, _"studium"_ (and _"studere"_ , to _"study"_ &
_"zeal"_ ). Note the French derivation, Atelier also translates to studio of
_"fashion designer"_ and _"alchemist"_ or _"wizard"_. This use is old and not
used much.

------
melling
He mentioned getting a Wacom Intuos tablet. I've been considering getting one,
or maybe this new device:

[http://9to5mac.com/2011/08/30/wacom-introduces-inkling-
table...](http://9to5mac.com/2011/08/30/wacom-introduces-inkling-tablet-for-
sketchy-people/)

This video turned me on to the Wacom:

<http://www.ctrlpaint.com/home/category/hardware>

He discusses tablets at about the 2m mark.

~~~
biot
If you're just getting started and don't need any professional features that
the Wacom might have, consider Monoprice's line of tablets:

[http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=108...](http://www.monoprice.com/products/subdepartment.asp?c_id=108&cp_id=10841)

They cost a small fraction of a comparable Wacom tablet.

~~~
madiator
Can it be used as a mouse in Win7 and does it even work with Ubuntu? Cannot
seem to find the info..

------
mason55
So inspiring... and... I want to cry when I look at what I've done with the
last nine years. Tagged with "inspiration" in delicious

------
zmanji
I found the detail on this face:
[http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=2660638&...](http://www.conceptart.org/forums/showpost.php?p=2660638&postcount=2018)
to be really good. If you go to later posts you can see how the painting
evolves.

~~~
muyuu
His wife here, painted in a similar style (2 hours):
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GIP_ACdivFQ>

------
jnorthrop
Its great to see this person's progression! He is obviously very talented and
has a real gift.

I went through a similar progression as a child. My mother worked as an art
teacher at the local YMCA while I was growing up. After school each day I
would take the bus to the Y and sit in on her art classes. I became a pretty
proficient artist -- technically speaking anyway -- but I never really
developed into what I would call a creative artist.

I just didn't have that "gift." My brother did (and does) however. The lesson
I learned is that anyone can learn to draw and be able to reproduce what they
see fairly well (it is really just techniques) but to actually create takes
something beyond technical skills. You have to have a vision and courage to
express it. MindCandyMan has it.

~~~
gnosis
_"Its great to see this person's progression! He is obviously very talented
and has a real gift. ... I just didn't have that 'gift.'"_

I very much doubt that anyone looking at this guy's early drawings/paintings
would say he had any kind of artistic "gift".

For me, the great lesson of looking at his progress is that it's a result of
dedication, persistence, and hard work.

As an artist, it's incredibly frustrating for me to hear non-artists tell me
how they "just can't draw" or "don't have the talent" and therefore won't even
bother to try.

You can do it! But you have to want it enough to walk the long, difficult
road.

 _"anyone can learn to draw and be able to reproduce what they see fairly well
(it is really just techniques) but to actually create takes something beyond
technical skills. You have to have a vision and courage to express it.
MindCandyMan has it."_

It's true that his later art especially shows a certain vision that goes
beyond mere technical skill. He is fortunate to have managed to tap in to it,
as not everyone does. However, I do believe that some sort of artistic vision
is latently present in most everyone. But you have to strive to discover and
express it over many years of hard effort. It's not something that's handed to
anyone on a silver platter.

~~~
SHIFTHAPPENZ
Oh, gnosis, I just read this comment of yours.

I believe you are right and it's all about "dedication, persistence, and hard
work", as you very well sum it up.

Maybe I'm looking a bit whiny overall, but as you see from my other two
comments on this news, I did not found a reason for walking the long,
difficult road.

Don't get me wrong, I'm sure that, as you say, i can do it (especially as I
fortunately have good starting conditions, always having enough money for food
etc) but why? How do all these people (you may be included as far as I see),
get their, "power" focused?

Why are you for example painting and not for example dedicating your life to
the poor? There are so many things to dedicate your life to. I could be a
judoka, painter, musician, father, researcher at university, owner of my own
little "internet business"... But not everything parallel. I tried that a bit
(Okay, I just started. I didn't went so far to actually be a father... But
none of the other things either, as you may have expected). Alone the many
different "peer groups" would be kind of giving me that feeling that I cannot
"take a break" and thus am not free. Or so.

Alas, I guess this is not a counseling board, and I will shut up for now.
Maybe some day I will have figured out what is really important to me.
Hopefully before I'm old, gray and sitting in a wheelchair.

------
baddox
His initial drawing are much, _much_ better than anything I could currently
muster.

~~~
kerryfalk
Have you tried? I used to draw, a _lot_. As much as this guy but I was a lot
younger. People often told me the same thing "I couldn't even draw a cup that
looks like a cup!" Sometimes I'd get them to try and if they were a little bit
patient they drew something that looked a lot like the first drawing of that
mug (Usually not including the shading).

I'm fairly confident that most people could draw that first mug if they really
wanted to. The drawings 30 pages in though, that takes much more skill and
patience. And it takes a long time to learn it.

~~~
vwoolf
I'm fairly confident most people could do most things if they really wanted
to, but it seems like most people don't. This is partially a function of
time—no one has the time to do everything in the world—but I do wonder about
the people who seemingly don't do anything well, or who don't believe they can
do anything well. It often seems like they haven't _really_ tried.

~~~
gnosis
A human lifetime is obviously too short to learn to do _everything_ well.

But many people waste a lot of the time they do have in their life -- playing
mindless games, reading/watching absolute trash, surfing the web or any number
of other absolutely useless activities.

It's very difficult to really dedicate yourself to getting better even at a
single skill over many long years. There are always distractions and a lot of
boredom and self-criticism to overcome. It's painful and hard, and many people
just don't have the willpower to do it.

------
JL2010
Wow, now that I think about it, I haven't committed 9 years to _anything_
remotely productive yet.

Coming on 5 years with electronics, programming, and guitar/music (started all
of these in college!). The electronics and programming are part of my job(s)
but I'm at least happy to be pursuing music purely out of my own interest and
doing it nearly every day. Would be interesting to see how I've progressed in
these fields in another 4 years or so...

------
morrow
For those who keep mentioning the 10,000 hour rule, I wonder if anyone has
heard of any tools for tracking this number? As in, a tool for logging hours
spent practicing different subject areas with the specific goal of reaching
10,000 hours. I wonder, too, if you could quantify smaller subsets of the
10,000 to provide more immediate feedback and goals along the way.

------
john2x
I've been looking for that thread for a long time. I remember seeing it a few
years ago when I was getting into drawing myself. But I sort of got lost along
the way. Ended up spending more time on coding than drawing. I guess one can
only focus on so much. But it's still definitely something I want to get into.

------
parallel
The lesson I'm taking from this is be ok with slow progress and early
failures. The trap I fall into is being discouraged too easily and giving up.
What this guy has done is the opposite. He just kept going and got good.

------
SHIFTHAPPENZ
read on page 5 or so that he was 22 when he started. i'm 22, too. shit i will
really stop wasting time with pc games and stuff.

time is the fire in which we burn...

edit: of course this are just my thoughts right now. i suppose i won't have
the persistence

------
tianshuo
Definitely Inspiring!!

------
pycassa
someone should do the same with programming

~~~
Bo102010
I went from 0 knowledge of Python to what I feel is quite a good handle by
working on Project Euler nearly every day for just over a year now. Highly
recommended!

------
cerebrum
cool

------
georgieporgie
Absolutely fascinating, and inspiring me to get out the sketch pad I've had
laying around for years...

------
anonInd
This is exactly why i come to HN for. Stay classy HN

------
absconditus
How is this relevant to HN?

~~~
danilocampos
I need to build a bot that detects and replies to these comments:

"Because n people voted it so.

'On-Topic: Anything that good hackers would find interesting. That includes
more than hacking and startups.'"

~~~
antirez
+1, and Honestly this is much more in topic for hackers than "how to avoid to
get gamed by your VC in ten rules".

~~~
scarmig
Wait, there's more to hacking than funding and getting acquired?

~~~
antirez
hacking has nothing to do with money. It is a side effect that _a few_ hackers
will get rich. May will just contribute a lot of interesting things for a
normal salary, possibly doing this great things in their free time.

