
Rarely-Asked Questions (2006) - vinnyglennon
http://www.paulgraham.com/raq.html
======
Jun8
I really miss pg.

I have given away many copies of _Hackers and Painters_ and have forwarded
many more pdf copies of it (pirated, sorry, but for a good cause) due to
exactly the same reason that Gideons place their book in hotel rooms or YW's
give away their "literature": I was trying to convert people to his way of
objective, no holds barred, minimalist way of thinking/writing. Unfortunately,
his approach has been equated by many to the "SV hacker types have an answer
to all world's great problems and they're all wrong and naive" school of
thought, the belittlement and maligning of which is very much in vogue
nowadays.

But these people miss the point. pg is interesting precisely because he was
(is?) so different from mainstream SV thinking (compare&contrast sama's
writings and his essays, not saying one is better but they are quite
different). Read his essay "What You cannot Say"
([http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html)) as
an antidote to current hysterical state of thought, "What You'll Wish You'd
Known"
([http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/hs.html))
should be required for _all_ high school students around the world trying to
shape their lives.

Hero worship from a founder-wannabe? Perhaps. Read the essays yourself and
find out.

~~~
mpfundstein
Did he stop writing/publishing/being active? pg so fundamentally changed my
way of looking at things like not a lot of authors before. It also made me
very depressed because I began to realize how fucked up life as an SE can be
if you work in the wrong environments. But it also enlightened me and now I
know precisely where I want to be.

~~~
mysterypie
He used to be a prolific commenter here on HN, but he hasn't posted for 2.5
years[1] though he did write three short essays in 2017[2]. I assume that
middle age, wife, child, and running a startup incubator/accelerator are major
impediments to anyone continuing with comments, essays, and programming.

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg](https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=pg)

[2]
[http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html](http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html)

~~~
ema
Reading (not even) between his lines it seems that it was the increased
hostility of online discourse that stopped him from writing more.

I'm sure he hasn't run out of ideas and wouldn't mind sharing them if there
was less screaming in response to them.

~~~
natecavanaugh
I wonder if some nominal fee might filter out those who wish to troll him and
his content. Like maybe a buck a month to read his content, 2 to be able to
comment and add to the discussion.

It could still be moderated to filter the trolls with means, but I haven't run
across too many people who are willing to contribute 24 bucks a year in order
to scream at someone else online.

Maybe a scheme like Pinboard, where each user raises the cost in a small way
as a selective pressure for handling user growth.

But I could be deluded. I believe his ideas and content are worth far more
than the prices I mentioned, but if he'd give them away, why not to folks who
are willing to put some skin in the game?

For me, he's one of the few writers online where I'd pay for consistent
thought pieces.

------
__s
> I'm about to become a teacher. How can I be a good one?

I think his point #1 is what was good for Paul Graham, rather than what makes
a good teacher. Some teachers would try single me out for my lack of work
ethic, & it would further disengage me. I learnt better from who would expose
us to ideas, & then leave us to our own devices, play makes for good learning,
& play must be voluntary. The teacher I respected most taught both Physics &
Programming in my senior years ( [https://ca.ratemyteachers.com/michael-
harwood/579411-t](https://ca.ratemyteachers.com/michael-harwood/579411-t) ).
He didn't have high standards. Which meant I was free to explore whatever I
felt like, building pyramids out of rulers, playing chess, reading about
random programming languages. Still keep in touch with him. I liked teachers
who would go off on tangents during a lecture. Whereas I had to drop Data
Management & Probability when the teacher wouldn't allow me to read in class

As for #2, there was a biology teacher who was a good teacher, very
passionate, very much meets #1 & #3, but he broke a ruler while smacking it on
a desk in rage, & he would tell us we all needed to be beaten like the
Chinese: [https://ca.ratemyteachers.com/bela-
nagy/452449-t](https://ca.ratemyteachers.com/bela-nagy/452449-t)

------
johan_larson
PG says a lot of interesting things, but he sure is invested in the idea that
the solution is a startup, for darn near every problem. He seems to think it's
something virtually anyone can do with some hope of success. I don't think
that squares with how hard people report having to work to make a serious try
of it, and the high rate of failure.

~~~
codingdave
I think you misunderstand his intended audience. He is talking mostly to
people who already want to do a startup, and more specifically to people who
agree with his definition of what a startup is. Within that group, his
writings help refine ways to work. But it is definitely targeted to a very
specific type of business and entrepreneur.

~~~
snowwrestler
This is true when he's writing about ideas like "do things that don't scale"
or "every transformative startup looks bad at first."

It's less true when he's writing about broader topics like "how to be a good
teacher" or "how can we solve economic inequality across all of society."

------
andrewstellman
_> How can I avoid turning into a pointy-haired boss?_

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

Staying a programmer is a good way to avoid becoming a pointy-haired boss, but
I’ve seen many programmers become pointy-haired bosses even as they continue
to write code. The most common way good people become bad bosses is to blame
people for their mistakes, because they’re nervous about the commitments they
make and don’t know how to leave themselves enough options. The closer you are
to the code, the less likely you are to suffer from this prolem (but it still
happens).

Jenny Greene and I wrote about this in Learning Agile:
[https://twitter.com/AndrewStellman/status/971810876830502912](https://twitter.com/AndrewStellman/status/971810876830502912)

------
WalterGR
_How can I become really good at Lisp programming?_

 _Write an application big enough that you can make the lower levels into a
language layer. Embedded languages (or as they now seem to be called, DSLs)
are the essence of Lisp hacking._

When I think about Clojure, the "layers of languages" metaphor doesn't spring
to mind.

Can anyone familiar with the language describe how well the metaphor holds for
it? Also, is there a difference in how well it holds for how Clojure is
presented and used in practice, vs. what's technically possible in the
language?

~~~
eigenhombre
Clojure is an opinionated Lisp whose focus on simplicity, and orientation
around data, may draw people away from the nested language approach.

You certainly can use macros to build DSLs in Clojure (the Midje and Korma
libraries make heavy use for them, for example). But over-heavy use of macros
is discouraged when common library functions operating on simple data
structures will do.

For a very different approach which feels much more aligned w/ PG's comment,
have a look at Norvig's "Paradigms of AI Programming: Case Studies in Common
Lisp." Reading it changed my notion of what Lisp is / can be; you can write
Clojure programs that look similar, but it seems to be rare to do so.

------
sotojuan
I'm not huge into YC, SV culture, etc. but the section with history book
recommendations was what started my passion for history and art history about
five years ago.

------
mjburgess
PG's anti-philosophy agit-prop is always very juvenile.

The "philosophy is proto-versions of everything else" schtick is such a
confused, petulant view.

Research academic analytic philosophy as practiced in contemporary
universities at post-grad level, as published in journals, has nothing to do
with the "philosophy" of history which meant _any_ "thinking systematically".

(Imagine "physics" being held to account for artistotle's Physics!)

Research philosophy is metacogition, ie., the application of concepts-about-
concepts to whichever concepts are of interest to a given philosopher:
everything from programming to physics to art.

This isnt a proto-version or a degraded version or anyhting. Its an enitrely
different discipline. Physicists do not regard cycling has some "proto"
version of classical physics.

The employing of domain concepts is different to employing metacognative
concepts to that domain. The latter is a whole field of independent research
with its own goals, criteria, method.

~~~
lmm
I think you demonstrate PG's point that words are unclear and this is a source
of much confusion. Even today, different people use "philosophy" to mean
radically different things.

> Research academic analytic philosophy as practiced in contemporary
> universities at post-grad level, as published in journals, has nothing to do
> with the "philosophy" of history which meant any "thinking systematically".

If post-grad philosophy is so thoroughly different from what is taught as
"philosophy" in undergrad, it would behove them to use a different name.

~~~
typon
I think the rest of the world is just fine with understanding concepts or
words that have overloaded meaning. I don't see how this is some showstopper
idea.

~~~
astine
I notice that there is a lot of conflict these days about what should be
called 'racism' or 'sexism' and a lot of it stems from words with overloaded
meanings. People actually come to blows over this.

------
cimmanom
That list of history reading appears depressingly Euro-centric. At the very
least, China and India have significant written history too.

