
Show HN: What would Paul Graham do? - aakil
http://wwpgd.com
======
run4yourlives
pg would probably use logic, experience and a little bit of gut feel to figure
out the best way to solve an issue, not refer to a single source of someone
else's writings.

Stop worshiping the man like he is a god. His essays are not bible scripture,
and in many areas they would actually be the completely wrong course of action
to take.

pg's thoughts are only one segment of knowledge that a person should be
receiving and performing their own analysis on. If you agree with _everything_
pg says, you have set him up as your personal demi-god and are dangerously
ignorant. I suggest reading something other than him for a while.

(Note: replace pg with any particular author or method if you choose.)

EDIT: You can usually tell when you've hit on an uncomfortable truth when the
reaction is fiercest. Irony: pump in "Trouble" to the tool under discussion.

~~~
randomdrake
Why are you assuming they are worshiping him? They simply made a fun little
app to search through his essays. Your comment seems rather ill-tempered and
misplaced. Did you even try the app out or are you just on a rant about how
you don't think people should make decisions based on the information of a
single source? Either way, I'm not sure how your comment is a helpful
contribution to this particular link.

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unavoidable
I really think HN has a habit of taking everything uber-seriously and has a
hard time accepting things as light-hearted jokes or fun projects.

~~~
run4yourlives
The issue is that a lot of HN has a habit of taking pg too seriously.

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pg
It appears to work. I asked it where to go for lunch, and the first reference
to lunch it found was Oren's Hummus.

~~~
alemhnan
I asked about clojure and it didn't find anything. Here there is a thread on
HN that asks the same: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3690026> .

PG, in case you are still around here, which is your take on clojure?

~~~
pg
It's the Lisp dialect I usually recommend.

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mck-
Have your views on Common Lisp changed, since you wrote your ANSI Common Lisp?

~~~
pg
Not really, no.

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hnriot
This is kind of creepy. The online equivalent of building a shrine.

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freejack
Props for putting a compelling spin ("WWPGD") on a rather mundane function
(searching a back catalog). Marketing FTW! :-)

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mikkel
I've just spent about 15 minutes reading an article by Paul Graham written in
1993.

This site is terrible for my productivity - very well done you evil person
you.

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randomdrake
Very fun little tool. It would make it exceptional if you would include a
small tidbit of information beneath each listing to say why the particular
essay matched the query.

~~~
ianstormtaylor
Yup if you could bold the matches Google-style that would be awesomely
helpful.

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psycho
Would be nice to see more of this for different persons and to compare
different people writings on the same subjects.

~~~
incision
Exactly what I was thinking.

A search engine with "author:" and "topic:" refinements to contrast the
writing of various folks on some topic or in reaction to some event.

I'd love to scan through a combined timeline of posts, essays and quotes
comparing several folks - something like Google trends that is "source aware".

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programminggeek
PG would probably go to wwpgd.com to find out what to do.

~~~
theorique
RuntimeError: maximum recursion depth exceeded

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SatvikBeri
"What should I build next?" linked me to "Frighteningly Ambitious Startup
Ideas". Alright then.

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esalman
I searched for some common swear words and found out an old thread on HN where
someone picked a fight with PG. So I guess it is a nice search tool.

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Gilly_LDN
So disappointed - the only question which matters -
<http://wwpgd.com/?q=daddy+or+chips>
[http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=daddy+or+chips&#...</a>

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skrish
The naming, though may sound cheesy to some, is a great marketing tactic to
get noticed. You can of course think of <<fill your favorite trusted source>>
person here.

But if you want people to notice & get some traction, knowing where and who
would notice it makes a huge difference. I would say it is a nice marketing
hack.

@aakil great job guys. :)

EDIT: This got covered in techcrunch!

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jfaucett
nice litte app :) I don't why some people are bashing this, I think its
actually useful. I especially like the idea of what would X do, and then
having a searchable repository of links to X's writings/ideas/thoughts. Also
as a side note, since your using bootstrap why not just fluid it so it looks
nice on iPad and mobile, that would be the icing on this nifty little cake :)

~~~
kevinwuhoo
Thanks! It was pretty much exclusively used by @aakil and I so there was
initially nearly no styling. I've added some responsive design now though! Let
me know if it looks wonky on tablet as I don't own one.

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riffraff
suggestion: show some examples. I honestly have no clue what should I input on
the search field.

~~~
solox3
Agreed. My first attempt was <http://wwpgd.com/?q=how+do+you+cook+steak%3F>,
and nothing came up. I guess I don't know who Paul Graham is yet.

~~~
davidw
I enquired as to the best color for the bike shed, but virtual PG was unable
to give me any advice.

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sadga
TC W13 folks:

<http://wwpgd.com/?q=dinner>

> Organic Startup Ideas

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munyukim
Cool!I just wonder how you came up with such a brilliant idea.

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theotherone
What's it built with?

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jcr
<http://builtwith.com/wwpgd.com>

~~~
klapinat0r
That doesn't answer his question. BuiltWith relies heavily on response
headers, which are easily faked, and often not descriptive on the actual tools
used. Many use nginx, varnished, even apache to run their applications,
regardless of how they were built. It is a nice tool though, I'll admit.

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tisme
Worry.

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bravoyankee
Actually, this could be the template for something extremely popular. It could
be called WW_S, the _ would be anyone in the family (or anyone in the world).

For a family where the father has gone away on an extended business trip, WW_S
would scour the Internet and local files for anything the father said. Then,
when the children want to get Dad's wisdom, they can by typing in or asking a
question - even if he's not physically available.

What about a famous author or celeb? WW_S would spider up everything he or she
has said and through a prediction algorithm formulate answers to questions,
much like WWPGD.

Heck, you could even do it with characters like Sparky the Bear or Santa
Claus. Basically, white label it.

I'm in a rush and typing this out on my phone, but hopefully you've got the
gist.

~~~
jaipilot747
This will only work if we document almost everything we do online. A large
part of our life and thought process is still offline, so the answer to "what
would X do" will most likely be extremely dependent on the situation and
context X was in when he/she made that statement.

~~~
bravoyankee
Seth Godin would work better than my aunt Gertrude, because Seth creates a lot
of online content that reflects his own thoughts, so YMMV for sure.

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ktizo
I was very disappointed to find no advice on hats, badgers or zombies.

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arbuge
dumb...

