Hackers and Painters: An unbashed recommendation

The best way to describe "Hackers and Painters": for the hacker, by the hacker and of the hacker. Paul Graham's essays are a treat to read, and they give an insight into a programmer-nerd's mindset. Graham starts with the nerd mentality in the typical American school and why nerds are different and why it is good to be a nerd. In another essay, Graham paints hacking as an art rather than a science, and does so by comparing it to, well, painting. He goes on to describe what programmers can learn from painting. Further, there are essays on the spirit of inquiry and why hackers are non-conformists and don't like authority.

The book then takes a more technical turn. One of the best essays here is about how web-based applications will change the rules of the game, load it in favour of innovators rather than the big companies and why they would make software engineering easier. Graham is quite clearly a big fan of Lisp and describes its use in his startup ViaWeb and why it is the ideal programming language of choice. There are quite a few other interesting topics he touches upon.

If that doesn't sound impressive, you can be rest assured that coming from a practitioner who has seen it all, it sounds absolutely natural, with a sense of deja vu. His writing is witty and very lucid. The arguments are well reasoned and the chain of thought is well presented. And there are quite a number of smart one-liners you can smile at. This is a case of text book essay writing (if I may use such a term). Highly recommended.

You can find many of these essays and more on Paul Graham's site.