Review on the book "Hackers and Painters"
Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age written by by Paul Graham, published by O'Reilly Media, Inc., in May 2004.
This book includes fifteen essays written by Paul Graham, some of which are also available from Graham's web site.
There are a few major schemes running throughout the book. In one scheme, Graham discusses extensively on programming languages. For hackers, programming languages are just a medium of expression and choice of them is very important. Graham discusses what a hundred-year language would look like and what a dream language can be. Graham sings high praise for Lisp-like languages and aspiring hackers, if convinced, should definitely try out Lisp and judge for themselves. :)
The second scheme is that Graham makes the strong case for developing web-based software rather than traditional desktop software. After discussing the wealth creation process, Graham suggests aspiring hackers to join start-ups where their performance can be measured and leveraged. Besides, they should try to solve really hard problems with a very powerful programming language to gain competitive advantage.
In other essays, Graham also discusses how to fight spam with Bayesian filtering, what constitute good design, and etc. Graham writes very fluently and convincingly, and it is a delightful read.