

Ask HN: What does PG mean here? - _RPM

&quot;When you get to hit a few difficult problems over the net at someone, you learn pretty quickly how hard they hit them back.&quot;[0]<p>[0]http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.paulgraham.com&#x2F;gh.html
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swombat
Full context:

> _But it 's particularly hard for hackers to know how good they are, because
> it's hard to compare their work. This is easier in most other fields. In the
> hundred meters, you know in 10 seconds who's fastest. Even in math there
> seems to be a general consensus about which problems are hard to solve, and
> what constitutes a good solution. But hacking is like writing. Who can say
> which of two novels is better? Certainly not the authors._

> *With hackers, at least, other hackers can tell. That's because, unlike
> novelists, hackers collaborate on projects. When you get to hit a few
> difficult problems over the net at someone, you learn pretty quickly how
> hard they hit them back. But hackers can't watch themselves at work. So if
> you ask a great hacker how good he is, he's almost certain to reply, I don't
> know. He's not just being modest. He really doesn't know.

PG's using some kind of sport (baseball?) analogy... you send problems out to
other people (the ball) and find out how well and easily they solve them (hit
them back). In other words, by interacting with other hackers on collaborative
projects like open-source development, you quickly learn how good other
hackers are because you can see how they solve problems, so you develop a more
objective judgement of the relative strengths of hackers that is harder to
achieve with some other professions.

~~~
b0o
It's tennis btw because you hit the ball back and forth. I guess it's also
referring to how to just keep bouncing ideas off each other this way too.

