
Ask PG: What has changed since you wrote Hackers and Painters in 2004? - flavio87
I'm thinking of buying your book, but since it is from 2004 I was just wondering if there are any key findings or events that would have dramatically changed your viewpoint on certain of the issues you write about, so I could bear that in mind while reading.<p>Maybe are you planning to release an updated version in the near future?
======
m0nastic
As way of a cautious recommendation:

About a year and a half ago, I was stuck for a week away from home traveling
for work. Searching for something to read while I was gone, I popped into an
Atlanta Barnes and Noble and futilely tried to find some books which were on
my Amazon wish list. Of the five or six I looked for, they didn't seem to have
any, save for "Hackers and Painters" (which required a storewide manhunt to
track down where exactly they had decided to shelve it).

I read it in my hotel room that night and spent the rest of the week
enthralled by the thought of quitting my job and working at a startup (either
my own, or someone else's). When I got home, I told my girlfriend that I was
possibly in the middle of something, and would need to take the next few weeks
to decide if I was about to upend my (our) life. She was understandably
nonplussed by this discussion.

Fast-forward a few weeks and I managed to come back down from the ledge. It
may have just been the comfort of home, or the general inertia of a content
over-priviledged life; but I reverted back to my previous plans, and set aside
the fanciful notion of slaying dragons and working at a startup.

So by all means, you should read it. Just be careful about your mindset when
you do, lest you also be swept away by notions of ramen dinners and liquidity
events. Like a call to the sea, it has the potential to plant itself in your
mind and than drive you mad if unheeded. You've been warned.

~~~
elias
What! That's sad. You're a victim of what I call "Everest Syndrome":
[http://eliasbizannes.com/blog/2011/08/everest-syndrome-is-
th...](http://eliasbizannes.com/blog/2011/08/everest-syndrome-is-the-biggest-
crime-in-our-society/)

Startups in my portfolio at CRV (we're the guys that funded Twitter, Yammer,
Millennial Media...) have plenty of cash and I think you'll make more money
working in a startup _and_ enjoy life more.

There is no risk, because if the startup fails, you move to the next one.
Silicon Valley is like working in a big company with multiple divisions: you
may change 'departments', but you're still working for something where
everything loosely aligns as the same goal.

~~~
stilist
There’s no risk in leaving stable employment for a lifestyle that can ruin
your finances and relationships, and leave you completely burnt out?

Startups can be huge successes personally and financially, but there’s
definitely risk.

~~~
hfthrowaway
No risk if you're a VC. Best case, you're net worth increases by orders of
magnitude - worst case, you still earn a hefty management fee on all committed
capital. If someone else spends five years of their life on a failed venture,
its just one company in your portfolio.

Nothing wrong with entrepreneurship. I just find it grating when the benefits
are expounded by people who take the exact opposite deal, in terms of
asymmetric risk.

~~~
elias
Not quite. If you are a venture partner and you don't produce returns on the
fund, you're out of there. The entire partnership needs to show gains on the
fund. In my experience, it's actually pretty easy raising money (either from
advertisers, investors, or sponsors) but what's hard is ensuring you give a
return on that money. You can measure the success of a venture fund not on how
much money they raise the first time, but how much they've raised in total
over successive rounds.

------
pg
I just looked through a copy. There's not much I'd change if I were writing
those essays today. Obviously e.g. "A Plan for Spam" is obsolete in the sense
that the state of the art has moved way past such techniques. Ditto for "The
other Road Ahead." But the rest I'd write much the same today.

~~~
pg
Actually now that I think about it, there is one thing I'd change. In "Mind
the Gap" I implied the reason people were upset by economic inequality was the
model of wealth they learned as children. Now I suspect it goes deeper than
that: I think humans may have a genetic predisposition to equality.

What made me realize this was going to Africa and seeing lots of animals in
the wild. All or nearly all the big mammals lived in groups and cooperated to
survive. It was clear that our ancestors would in their day have been one of
these groups, also cooperating to survive (as hunter-gatherers still do in a
few places), and that their cooperative inclinations were probably genetically
preprogrammed.

If so then people's problem with inequality is not a learned behavior. It
simply feels wrong to humans.

That doesn't mean they're right. The Monte Carlo fallacy feels right to
humans, but it isn't. But it does probably mean that people are happier, all
other things being equal, when there is less inequality.

Of course you have to balance this against (a) other, equally deeply held
traditions, like not stealing, and (b) the slower technological/economic
growth you get when you ban being rich.

~~~
rbarooah
Could you explain what it means for people to be 'right' or not 'right' about
inequality? I'm referring to where you say 'That doesn't mean they're right'

If we're genetically constructed to feel unhappy about something, and we build
a society that makes that thing true, then it seems as though we are
manufacturing suffering, and we should seek to reduce it.

From what perspective can it be 'right' to knowingly maintain a society where
the majority of people are guaranteed to suffer?

Also - isn't there a giant difference between 'banning being rich', and making
it possible for a reasonable number of people to share in prosperity. There's
plenty of evidence suggesting that the US was more prosperous when there was
less inequality, and yet there were always some very rich people.

~~~
pg
I mean this inclination doesn't imply anything about what economic policy
should be, except in the narrowest sense that gratifying it will (all other
things being equal, which they are decidedly not) make people feel better.

~~~
zohebv
> I mean this inclination doesn't imply anything about what economic policy
> should be

Isn't it disingenuous to infer that this inclination should not imply anything
about economic policy? I would arrive at the opposite conclusion. Economics
are sentiment driven by a huge factor. Robert Shiller's work in behavioral
economics and his book Irrational exuberance has established and popularized
this idea. Krugman's discussion of the unsuitability of BitCoin as a currency
rests largely on the peculiar nature of human sentiment and behavior. Large
income gaps are perceived by most people as unfair irrespective of the
contributions by the wealthy. No one thinks that Bill Gates/ Edison made a
greater contribution to social progress than Einstein/Gandhi. I don't think
the association of the net worth of an individual to the contribution that
they have made to society is very strong. Economies rewards people largely on
the basis of demand/supply with I believe is a weak proxy for social
contributions.

Perhaps you want to draw an analogy to say gay marriage where the popular vote
might end up denying gay rights, but I don't think a similar argument holds in
the case of wealth distribution.

~~~
sokoloff
> No one thinks that Bill Gates/ Edison made a greater contribution to social
> progress than Einstein/Gandhi.

Um, I do.

~~~
zohebv
I should have said most people, rather than noone. Bill Gates helped make the
PC cheap by building a hardware independent OS that commoditized hardware.
Edison has a fairly colorful commercial history. But the PC/electricity
revolution would have happened with or without these individuals, there were
enough competitors. The same cannot be said about Einstein. When Einstein
published the General Theory only 2 other people were able to understand it.
Virtually, all peaceful civil disobedience protests that we see all over the
world from American Civil rights to the Tunisian revolution follow a template
set up by Gandhi. Peaceful civil resistance is an action that was never really
thought of as practical/possible before. Bill Gates is making substantial
social difference via vaccines now, but I would not count his work at
Microsoft in the same league as Einstein/Gandhi.

~~~
Confusion
The physics community was already converging on the special theory of
relativity when Einstein published it. All the signs were there --and had been
for quite a while--, but someone needed to add 1 + 1 together and accept the
implications. Einstein did that and his explication was very clear, making it
immediately undeniable (which doesn't mean that it didn't take some time for
people to acknowledge that). However, if he hadn't, one of dozens of others
would have. The time was ripe and the evidence was clear.

    
    
      When Einstein published the General Theory only 2 other 
      people were able to understand it.
    

This is an urban legend. There were dozens of people that immediately
understood it and hundreds that understood it after some additional
explanation. That doesn't mean they accepted it in the absence of experimental
confirmation.

However, the General theory was a far greater achievement than the Special
theory, because the idea of mass influencing the geometry of space-time was
far less obvious and it may have been a decade before anyone else would have
investigated that possibility. Nevertheless: someone else would have come up
with it. Einstein was no greater than any of the other great physicists of the
time, who each had brilliant idea. Einstein just happened to have one that
became widely known.

~~~
wisty
Well, Einstein had a few great ideas, not one. Special relativity, general
relativity, statistical mechanics, and energy = mass. He only really missed
quantum mechanics. Newton and Leibniz come close, but none of his
contemporaries.

But it is really off topic. Let's say Einstein and his contemporaries are more
important than Bill, the guy who really made DOS, and the first few MS
employees, but obviously the later group is a lot wealthier.

------
pushingbits
<http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm>

Probably worth linking to here.

While I enjoy pg's writing and I think the essays convey a good message in
spirit, I do think there's quite a substantial populist aspect to some of
them.

I'm glad I read all of them, but if I had to choose, I'd probably get On Lisp
in deadtree format first.

~~~
lawnchair_larry
Interesting. Not only is this guy getting downvoted, but I have showdead on,
so I can see that another person commented with this link and the comment got
nuked.

This is not a troll, and it is not inflammatory. It is reasonable discourse
and an opposing view. These kinds of things are required for intellectual
honesty.

It's especially ironic because the post starts out with a quote from pg:

 _I actually worry a lot that as I get "popular" I'll be able to get away with
saying stupider stuff than I would have dared say before. This sort of thing
happens to a lot of people, and I would_ really* like to avoid it*

Whichever moderator killed that link, and anyone downvoting this guy - high
quality discussion allows reasonable minds to disagree. Censoring it because
it is about pg is perpetuating the very problem pg describes.

~~~
irrumator
I also disagree with the downvoting as it goes against all the rules and very
spirit of HN, but this whole area is kinda touchy. It's probably the biggest
amount of beef ever in HN history. It spilled out into outright brawls in the
comments more than once between pg and idlewords:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=982832>

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1048849>

Kindof hilarious actually. idlewords finishes by calling pg a "weenis".

~~~
trewq
"idlewords finishes by calling pg a "weenis"."

Yes I thought the crude insults were indicative of the quality of the post as
a whole.

~~~
blasdel
Did you not read the preceding paragraph?

Maciej was mocking Paul's use of the same name-calling he professes to
despise.

------
byrneseyeview
I just reread a bunch of the essays. There is very little that needs updating
(and later essays address this).

I get the sense that PG wrote the essays and that book so they could be read
many years in the future. Call it a decade for the timely ones, and much more
than that for the rest. A few of the updates would be along the lines of "This
needs to change from the future tense." For example, this brief review of the
iPhone from 2001:

 _With Web-based software, most users won't have to think about anything
except the applications they use. All the messy, changing stuff will be
sitting on a server somewhere, maintained by the kind of people who are good
at that kind of thing. And so you won't ordinarily need a computer, per se, to
use software. All you'll need will be something with a keyboard, a screen, and
a Web browser. Maybe it will have wireless Internet access. Maybe it will also
be your cell phone. Whatever it is, it will be consumer electronics: something
that costs about $200, and that people choose mostly based on how the case
looks. You'll pay more for Internet services than you do for the hardware,
just as you do now with telephones._

------
InfinityX0
I put together this 76-point summary of Hackers and Painters on my blog:
<http://www.rosshudgens.com/thoughts-from-paul-graham/>

------
phamilton
For those who don't know, Hackers and Painters is essentially a collection of
his essays on paulgraham.com

The essays are great, read them.

~~~
davi
To that extent, the answer to the OP's question is likely "See the essays I've
written since _Hackers and Painters_ came out."

------
Jun8
This book was an epiphany for me! A colleague lended it to me, I started
because the title sounded interesting, but I was thinking "here's another
cocky all-knowing hacker type giving out cool advice". Boy, was I wrong. I
first read the title essay and the truth of it struck me so much I took the
day off (not literally, just hid somewhere where I coulnt be found) and
finished the whole thing. That was almost three years ago. I've given quite a
number of copies as presents and observed similar reactions. I go back and
reread parts of the essays every now and then.

A good/bad analogy is a good book (or the good book), most of the advice has
_very_ long shelf life.

I created my HN account soon afterwards and applied for YC that winter
(rejected). I haven't done much in all this time, though. Books can carry you
only so far.

------
SwellJoe
I still recommend it and lend it to friends. It's mostly made up of essays
from his website, so if you want to avoid spending money, you can get most of
the book from simply reading the essays on his site. The age of the essays is
not a good reason not to read them, however.

------
gabrielroth
The idea from the book that seems most obsolete to me is that a web startup
founder could gain a competitive advantage by using Lisp. (Not that a Lisp
might not be the best choice, but your competitors are more likely to be using
it too, and if they're not they're using something much closer than they were
in 2004.)

------
dreamux
I read it a few months back, it's still a good read. PG's blog posts aren't
easily dated, as you'll often see posts from 5 years ago linked here on HN.

~~~
pedalpete
Same, though I wonder if his thoughts on languages has changed much, if at
all.

I was looking at learning a new language and considered Lisp, but decided on
rails because it seems to be the most common language for web-apps these days,
and therefore it should be easier to find good Rails developers than Lisp
developers.

I'm curious if PG feels the same way about using Lisp/Arc for business reasons
vs. Lisp for technical reasons.

~~~
wingo
I wonder this as well. Experimentally speaking, Lisp does not appear to have
been a great success. I still prefer it, but that appears to be a perennially
minority viewpoint, not necessarily one always just on the cusp of winning.

------
mathattack
Technology predictions are very tough. (Look at The Road Ahead - missed the
Internet ahead) Anything that survived 7 years should be considered a gem
that's beyond technology and more about the humanities. (I mean this in the
sense of being non-formulaic)

------
dgallagher
Links to buy/sample the book:

Amazon: [http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas-
Computer/dp...](http://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Painters-Big-Ideas-
Computer/dp/1449389554)

iTunes: <http://itunes.apple.com/us/book/hackers-painters/id396767497>

BN: [http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hackers-and-painters-paul-
gr...](http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hackers-and-painters-paul-
graham/1100152833)

BN (nook): [http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hackers-painters-paul-
graham...](http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hackers-painters-paul-
graham/1022856986)

~~~
yuvipanda
And for those who want to buy it in India:

Flipkart:
[http://www.flipkart.com/books/9350230398?_l=CJHVEqJO3veuHytb...](http://www.flipkart.com/books/9350230398?_l=CJHVEqJO3veuHytbACc9dw--&_r=x1fI5ZJ1MfZUBFSjsB7eKQ--&ref=ae687673-22e7-4410-9819-fb098d08ab9f&pid=os33f9817e)

