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December 29, 2004
Hackers and Painters
Hrm, something about the title of the book and the name of this entry's category doesn't quite fit...
Oh well.
I finished Hackers and Painters today - Paul Graham's book of collected essays on software and life in general. It has some gems in it, but overall I wasn't terribly impressed.
In spots it reeked of someone drawing conclusions from a sample size of one (all projects/products/web applications are just like Viaweb). Oh, and I don't know how he could have plugged lisp as the end-all-be-all programming language one more time... In the interest of full disclosure - I've tried picking up lisp a few times, but I've never really "gotten it" - so clearly this sentiment is all sour grapes.
Don't get me wrong - some of the essays (mostly the ones that don't wax naively about how "in the future web software will eliminate the need for a well-defined software life-cycle) were really good, but overall, the book left a bit of a bad taste in my mouth.
Bookpool is selling the hardcover for $13 - which I'd say it's worth.
Posted by dberger at December 29, 2004 9:52 PM