
Paul Graham On Two Kinds of Programmers and Painters - rams
http://cycle-gap.blogspot.com/2009/08/paul-graham-on-two-kinds-of-programmers.html
======
gjm11
Maciej Ceglowski, who is posting in this thread but evidently too modest to
blow his own trumpet, wrote what seems like the definitive response to Paul
Graham On Painting back in 2005:
<http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm> .

~~~
pg
I never bothered to refute that at the time, but as a matter of fact
practically everything he says there is mistaken. E.g. that no one painted
alla prima till recent times, when arguably the most famous exponent of this
style is Franz Hals, who worked in the early 1600s.

It's a strange situation. If someone writes an essay attacking you, you either
have to respond, in which case you're letting someone else pick your topics,
or you have to ignore it, in which case people who don't know any better may
be convinced by it.

Though I'm not willing to use up an essay to refute someone, I will in a
comment thread:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=984217>

One thing I still wonder about is whether this guy actually believes what's
he's saying, or whether he's deliberately trolling. He seems reasonably smart.
How could he not have heard of Franz Hals? On the other hand, who would try to
keep a troll going for 4 years?

~~~
idlewords
Frans Hals is actually my favorite painter, so if people take nothing else
away from this thread, I would urge them to go check that shit out.

The exact quote I was responding to in my essay:

"When oil paint replaced tempera in the fifteenth century, it helped painters
to deal with difficult subjects like the human figure because, unlike tempera,
oil can be blended and overpainted."

In support of which you now cite... Frans Hals, a sui generis painter who
worked _two hundred years_ later. I'm surprised you chose him over El Greco,
who at least is within two centuries of the time period under discussion.

It's been entertaining watching you try to walk your various misstatements
about art history back in this thread, but I am somewhat surprised by this
habit of calling people who poke holes in your writing "trolls", given that
you are the author of a celebrated taxonomy of online argument that places
name-callers among the lowest of the low.

Weenis.

~~~
pg
Actually Franz Hals was my counterexample to your statement that no one
painted alla prima till the 19th century. There are lots of others I could
have picked (Fragonard for example) but I figured the most famous example of
the style would do.

My support for the statement that oil paint allowed painters to blend and
overpaint is the example I gave earlier:

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentimento>

[http://www.escholarship.org/editions/data/13030/d9/ft1d5nb0d...](http://www.escholarship.org/editions/data/13030/d9/ft1d5nb0d9/figures/ft1d5nb0d9_00061.jpg)

Van Eyck, who was such an early user of oil paint that for much of history he
was considered the inventor of oil painting, is also one of the standard
examples of overpainting to correct mistakes. How much more conclusive
evidence could one want?

~~~
idlewords
In your essay, you implied that people were painting _alla prima_ during the
Renaissance, that Renaissance painters would start from a rough sketch
directly from the canvas, and that they could repeatedly rework parts of the
picture.

You can link every Dutch master you want without making your argument any less
bogus.

Here's what I actually wrote:

"The allusion a sketchy, iterative style of painting that used to be called
"alla prima", where you block shapes in in oil paint and then swoosh them
around the composition as the painting progresses, perhaps repainting entire
sections of the picture. This is the way Graham and I were taught to paint,
but it has nothing whatsoever to do with painting in the fifteenth century."

If you want to refute me, show me the Renaissance master who painted directly
onto a blank canvas, starting with a "blurry sketch" and iteratively refining
it into a finished work, like Hals, or Manet, or Rubens, or Bob Ross, rather
than working with underdrawings and thin glazes of color.

You can't, because no one painted like that then. But talking about
painstaking preliminary design and a sequential, pretty rigid method would
have been inconvenient for the purposes of your essay.

~~~
pg
_In your essay, you implied that people were painting alla prima during the
Renaissance, that Renaissance painters would start from a rough sketch
directly from the canvas, and that they could repeatedly rework parts of the
picture._

Let's check. These two paragraphs are everything I've written about the use of
oil paint in the fifteenth century:

    
    
        It helps to have a medium that makes change easy. 
        When oil paint replaced tempera in the fifteenth 
        century, it helped painters to deal with difficult 
        subjects like the human figure because, unlike tempera, 
        oil can be blended and overpainted. (Taste for Makers)
    
        What made oil paint so exciting, when it first 
        became popular in the fifteenth century, was that 
        you could actually make the finished work from the 
        prototype. You could make a preliminary drawing if 
        you wanted to, but you weren't held to it; you could 
        work out all the details, and even make major changes, 
        as you finished the painting. (Design and Research)
    

These are pretty uncontroversial statements. Neither implies that artists
started painting whole paintings alla prima from day 1. They say oil allowed
artists to work out details and make changes after they'd started. And here is
van Eyck doing that ca. 1430:

[http://www.escholarship.org/editions/data/13030/d9/ft1d5nb0d...](http://www.escholarship.org/editions/data/13030/d9/ft1d5nb0d9/figures/ft1d5nb0d9_00061.jpg)

I didn't (obviously) use Franz Hals to support my statements about the use of
oil paint in the fifteenth century, since he worked in the seventeenth. I gave
Hals as a counterexample to this claim by you:

    
    
        This is not how people painted with oil until the 
        19th century.

------
EAMiller
"Cézanne could not draw, he makes the same drawing mistakes that every one
makes in introductory drawing classes." This is not the case. Cézanne could
draw exceedingly well. Drawing != photographic representation.

~~~
pg
Obviously in this context I'm talking about drawing in the sense of rendering.

~~~
huntse
That doesn't make your statement any less false. It might suit your metaphor
for that to be the case, but facts are stubborn things dude. Pretty good
rendering here <http://www.greatmodernpictures.com/drawinggal15lg.jpg>

What about this one? Look like someone making mistakes in introductory drawing
class to you? [http://www.art-
wallpaper.com/4056/C%C3%A9zanne+Paul/Sketch+a...](http://www.art-
wallpaper.com/4056/C%C3%A9zanne+Paul/Sketch+after+Pigalles+Love+and+Friendship-1024x768-4056.jpg)

How about this? Beginner rendering perhaps?
[http://amica.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/AMICO~1~1~3...](http://amica.davidrumsey.com/luna/servlet/detail/AMICO~1~1~35400~99964:Sketch-
of-Anatomical-Sculpture--
rec?sort=INITIALSORT_CRN%2COCS%2CAMICOID&qvq=q:AMICOID=CMA_.1958.14.a+;sort:INITIALSORT_CRN,OCS,AMICOID;lc:AMICO~1~1&mi=0&trs=1)

The problem is you can't quite bring yourself to admit that you picked a
really bad example. You wanted someone who's technical deficiencies were made
up for by their conceptual skill, and you chose someone who could draft their
ass off and also had an incredible ability to choose fantastic things to
produce.

~~~
jules
I think he means things like this:

[http://www.navigo.com/wm/paint/auth/cezanne/sl/cezanne.coin-...](http://www.navigo.com/wm/paint/auth/cezanne/sl/cezanne.coin-
table.jpg)

The color is wonderful, the objects are wonderful, but they are hovering above
the table and the fruit on the platter is painted like it's going to roll out.
The perspective isn't right either.

Does anyone else feel uneasy if they see a painting with wrong perspective? It
totally destroys the beauty for me.

~~~
zimbabwe
You need to understand that this is entirely a subjective opinion. There are
forms of art where accuracy is prized, but in any kind of modern art, any rule
can be broken if the result is interesting.

Are you saying you like none of Picasso's later work? Or even Dalí's?

~~~
jules
There is no way to judge art other than by subjective opinion.

> There are forms of art where accuracy is prized, but in any kind of modern
> art, any rule can be broken if the result is interesting. > Are you saying
> you like none of Picasso's later work? Or even Dalí's?

I do like Picasso's and Dali's work and also Cezanne's work. I even like the
picture I linked to. But this is the key part:

> if the result is interesting.

I don't see how the wrong perspective and tilted platter add to the appeal of
the painting. It seems to be an accident.

~~~
zimbabwe
Fair enough.

Certainly for me, a tilted bowl of fruit that defies logic is more interesting
than a boring bowl of fruit. It still doesn't fascinate me _incredibly_ , but
it at least adds something worth thinking about. I'm not that well-versed in
painting, however, so perhaps somebody more enthusiastic than I can explain to
both of us what makes Cezanne so awesome?

------
dgallagher
_He was terribly frustrated he was like this guy who had all kinds of ideas,
but he couldn't articulate them with his hand._

I've experienced this. Since several years ago I've had tons of idea's for
startups I'd like to create. Problem was, I had a business/finance/network
engineer background and had no way of actually building anything. It's
extremely difficult being stuck like that. Ambitions are polluted by your own
limitations.

Three years ago a few close friends and I decided to develop a video game
using XNA for Xbox 360. We were three programmers, two artists, and myself who
handled game design (not a coder). It was a simple game. Basically, you were a
guy on a board with a bat and would melee with others, trying to knock them
off the board. It was sorta like Nintendo Hockey crossed with Super Smash
Brothers in a top-down 2D view. Long story short, the programmers lost
interest and the project died after two years of part-time work. The two
artists and I were more or less helpless in trying to finish the game, so we
had to abandon it.

This was a year ago and I was frustrated. I came to the realization that in
order to build something, you need to have the idea, and you need to have a
means of building it. So I ordered a bunch of books and started to teach
myself how to program. Thats enabled me to work on a new startup.

Now I can see things much clearer having the ability to write code. That
frustration of not being able to build your ideas, or having their destiny out
of your control, is completely gone. It's empowering. This quote really rings
true to me now:

 _The best programmers are the ones that combine in one head both the ability
to translate ideas into code and having the ideas. Just like the best artists
have both the ability ... (have) a great hand._

------
kingkawn
cmon pg, your interpretation of Cezanne is like Caravaggio talkin about Lisp.

~~~
pg
Can you give an example of something I said that you think is false? Or is
this just a sort of reverse argument from authority?

~~~
idlewords
False statements you have made about art:

"The paintings made between 1430 and 1500 are still unsurpassed." (easy
refutation - go to sistine chapel, look up).

"What made oil paint so exciting, when it first became popular in the
fifteenth century, was that you could actually make the finished work from the
prototype."

This is not how people painted with oil until the 19th century. It was a very
expensive medium requiring careful preparatory work, sketches, and so on.

"Most painters start with a blurry sketch and gradually refine it." -
completely unsupported.

"Line drawings are in fact the most difficult visual medium" - yes, carving
marble is much easier.

"When oil paint replaced tempera in the fifteenth century, it helped painters
to deal with difficult subjects like the human figure because, unlike tempera,
oil can be blended and overpainted." - again, this is how oil paint was used
much later. At the time it was painted in thin, transparent layers that did
not allow the kind of reworking you learned four hundred years later in art
class.

And now we have 'Cézanne can't draw" to add to the list.

Many of your other statements about art fall more in the 'not even wrong'
category - fatuous generalizations based on your own tastes, but presented as
deep insights about the world.

So it is a little disingenuous of you to keep asking for people to point to
specific places where you are wrong. The wrong is diffusely and uniformly
distributed.

~~~
pg
Actually you're mistaken in all 6 cases:

1\. _easy refutation - go to sistine chapel, look up_

You're claiming that the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel is better (not just as
good, but better) than everything Leonardo and Bellini ever painted. The
number of art historians who'd agree with that statement is zero.

2\. _This is not how people painted with oil until the 19th century._

[http://static.squidoo.com/resize/squidoo_images/-1/draft_len...](http://static.squidoo.com/resize/squidoo_images/-1/draft_lens2016901module10642403photo_1217059430hals-
malle-babbe-detail_.jpg)

3\. _completely unsupported._

Your counterclaim is likewise completely unsupported. But anyone who wants to
settle the matter can choose any "how to paint" type book published in the
20th century, and they'll see that was considered the default technique.

4\. _carving marble is much easier_

Carving marble requires more specialized training, but the kind of difficulty
I was talking about was how critically viewers judge the result. They are
tough on sculpture too, but I think they are as tough on line drawing. The
less there is, the more closely it's examined.

5\. _At the time it was painted in thin, transparent layers that did not allow
the kind of reworking_

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pentimento>

[http://www.escholarship.org/editions/data/13030/d9/ft1d5nb0d...](http://www.escholarship.org/editions/data/13030/d9/ft1d5nb0d9/figures/ft1d5nb0d9_00061.jpg)

6\. If you want to offer any actual counterargument about Cezanne's drawing,
feel free.

~~~
idlewords
Wow, you really want to do this?

2 - I like Frans Hals too!

3 - Yes, that's how painting is taught now, to the kind of people who read
'how to paint' books.

4 - Nice weaseling.

5 - Notice how those carefully fixed errors show _fully-drawn_ hands, feet,
etc., rather than a cloud of "rough drafts" like you would see in a painting
done in the modern style? Another nice demonstration of the point that oil
painting was not a fluid, iterative medium in its first few hundred years.

6\. Try one of the numerous image links in the thread.

As for 1, Aaron Swartz sent us both this quote the first time you and I had
this argument, and I'm surprised you've forgotten it. It's from Graham Larkin,
curator of the National Gallery of Canada, whom he asked to adjudicate your
claim:

""By even the most conservative standards (which your buddy seem to be
applying), you'd need to go at least a few decades further, into the High
Renaissance. Julius II's didn't even start commissioning Michelangelo's
Sistine Ceiling and Raphael's Vatican Stanze (School of Athens &c) didn't
start until 1508. These works don't exactly represent a decline, except by
Preraphealite standards which would judge them as over-sophisitcated and
lacking in primitive simplicity.

(That's IT: your friend's a Preraphaelite! Well history is not on his or her
side; such Victorian predilections are a mere blip in the history of Western
aesthetics.) The generation after the giant Raphael (and the giant Durer in
the North) is a much better candidate for cultural and artistic decline--a
story complicated by Michaelangelo's inconvenient longevity. Historians have
often pointed to the 1527 Sack of Rome as a downturn in artistic ferment, or
at least in the unparalleled ascendancy of Italy. I would add that Western
painting of around 1500 can scarcely be separated from the other visual arts,
including the still-young (to the West) technology of print, brought to
incredible levels of sophistication by Durer and others in precisely the
post-1500 decades. One wonders whether your friend meant "1500" or "like,
1500.""

Of course, Dr. Larkin gets one thing wrong. You're not a pre-Raphaelite,
you're just a big ole weenis.

~~~
gatormax
Weenis? Really?

From what I can tell, Mr. Graham, at best, might be wrong about a handful of
(evidently fuzzy) facts about painting. I do not see the logical bridge from
that to his status as "big ole weenis." That's disappointingly puerile.

------
chipsy
I think it's important to recognize that the creativity/implementation
distinction isn't going to be universal across all your skills, even within
something as seemingly specific as programming or drawing. Maybe you have an
easy time reasoning about mutable data structures, or maybe you are
particularly able at capturing light and shadow. If you can recognize which
things are strengths and deliberately extend _all_ of the things you are good
at into an overall creative vision - a cumulation of your ability that takes
those strengths to the "next level" - then you'll go a lot farther than you
will just trying to shore up the weaknesses.

(That said, you can become good at just about anything with carefully
cultivated passion and a dash of smarts.)

------
andrewcooke
seems to me that, if this makes any sense, the interesting question is: why
can't you have both?

given that selection for "great art" is over a large number of people, why
can't you find someone that is gifted in both areas?

perhaps one somehow counteracts the other (for example, you are praised for
"mechanical skills" and so never learn "abstract thinking")?

or perhaps the market values the combination of "poor mechanical skills" with
"great abstract skills" because it places the latter in strong relief?

or perhaps you do get people who are both (gerhard richter is the best example
i can think of), but that's not enough to meet demand? (or meet fashion?)

or perhaps the numbers just don't work out - the population is just large
enough for one or the other, but not both?

or, finally, perhaps the whole basis of the post is, in fact, false?

~~~
zimbabwe
Yeah, Paul is talking up his ass.

Afraid I don't know enough about programmers or painters to spout names, but
in any other artistic medium you've got a mix of all types. I'll use film as
my example because film's a medium in which you have a hundred people working
together, and very elaborate roles evolved to let people do exactly what they
want to do.

Some directors function as merely directors. They decide what they like, and
they have other people execute. But other directors _can_ and _do_ insist on
controlling other parts of the creative process. I'm not a fan of James
Cameron, but the guy writes, directs, and edits his movies, and he's very
involved in set design as well. Some props he insists on making himself
because he doesn't trust anybody else to do it right. So there's a guy who
knows _what_ he wants to do, and is also capable of the incredible technical
feats required to pull it off.

------
Kirby
Of course, in reality, most people aren't exactly these two extremes, great
implementer and great innovator. Everyone has both traits in different
amounts, and if you have a functioning team, they can be split up unevenly.

In this way of looking at things, I'll freely admit to being more of an
implementer. If someone asks for what they want, I'll do my best to make the
software do it in a way that's efficient and delights the user.

Given vague instructions, I'll do my best, but with mixed results.

But when I team up with someone who always has new ideas - I can actually sort
through them, figure out which ones will work, which ones will meet the goals,
and synthesize them into great product. Most people can't do that with their
own ideas.

I think the original quote - and it's short, not a full essay, so this
criticism is mildly unfair - elevates the innovator too much over the
implementer. When in reality, you win when you have both, that know their own
strengths and limitations, and are grateful for the other. I produce better
work when I pair up with an innovator, and so does he or she. And the two of
us will dominate over a dual-innovator team.

Also, realize implicitly in everything Paul Graham says, you can add the
words, "For a startup technology company." That's what he knows, that's what
he values. There's a lot of work out there that needs implementers, and
innovators would be frustrated, unsuccessful, and miserable at. Don't feel
threatened if you're not Paul Graham's Ideal Entrepreneur/Programmer. I'm not.
I'll never be extremely rich, most likely, but I'm happy, good at my job,
valued by my company. I say this because opinions like this caused me a _lot_
of self doubt in my early twenties, and they turned out to not be the accurate
predictor of DOOM that I feared. If you're smart, and willing to do a good
day's work, success is out there - not at a company run by someone like
Graham, but he wouldn't have success at a company for you either.

------
tripngroove
I posit the transcriber interpreted Cézanne phonetically.

------
garnet7
> When you put the stuff on the wall in a room full of other paintings, it
> looks like there's a spotlight shining on his paintings and other ones have
> been sprayed with a light coating of mud.

What is this due to? Cezanne's skill with color? Or something else?

------
ThinkWriteMute
What in the world is wrong with his style sheet? Why is the entire post
emphasized?!

~~~
zimbabwe
The emphasized part is a quote. It just happens to be a long blocky quote, so
it looks merely like a bold post.

------
lucifer
If only hacker sketches on a napkin looked like this:

<http://tinyurl.com/y9b5n2d>

