Hackers & Painters
HAHAHAHAHA!
I'm reading right now the first book that I HAVE TO read for university AND makes me laugh!! Yes, really! This can even happen to a nerd like me at a technical orientated university. This can even happen at a course about dynamic programming languages :)
That's the book I'm talking about. Hackers & Painters by Paul Graham (That's a guy who's been programming for ages in the old-school language LISP and sold his Viaweb company to Yahoo! - but still has a good sense of humour!!!).
Well, even though the title might sound a bit scary and most people get scared when they hear that it has soemthing to do with computers, Hackers & Painters is probably fun to read for everyone. At least it faces more general problems of the computer age society than coding and the quest for the ultimate programming language. Instead, it's about how to get rich for example. Or about why nerds are unpopular - which was the first chapter that I just finished to read.
If life seems awful to kids, it's neither because hormones are turning you all into monsters (as your parents believe), nor because life actually is awful (as you believe). It's because the adults, who no longer have any economic use for you, have abandoned you to spend years cooped up together with nothing real to do. Any society of that type is awful to live in. You don't have to look any further to explain why teenage kids are unhappy.
I really like Graham's writing style. Not only that he uses humorous as well as very neat (art/philosophy) historical metaphors/references (For example: Did you know that Michelangelo had his nose broken by a bully?), he expresses his thoughts in a provocative way. Yes, it really makes you think.
For example:
Alberti, arguably the archetype of the Renaissance Man, writes that "no art, however minor, demands less than total dedication if you want to excel in it." I wonder if anyone in the world works harder at anything than American school kids work at popularity.
Well, isn't that reminding you a lot of MySpace somehow? I started at least wondering about if this is maybe one of the major resaons for the huge success of that plattform...
Anyway, this my book recommendation for you. If you don't want to buy the book (even though it has the wonderful Bruegel painting Tower of Babel on its cover which I recognized at once to be part of the big Bruegel collection in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum by the way - yeah, arthistorian me!!), feel free to read one or the other essay by Graham on his website ;)
I'm reading right now the first book that I HAVE TO read for university AND makes me laugh!! Yes, really! This can even happen to a nerd like me at a technical orientated university. This can even happen at a course about dynamic programming languages :)
That's the book I'm talking about. Hackers & Painters by Paul Graham (That's a guy who's been programming for ages in the old-school language LISP and sold his Viaweb company to Yahoo! - but still has a good sense of humour!!!).
Well, even though the title might sound a bit scary and most people get scared when they hear that it has soemthing to do with computers, Hackers & Painters is probably fun to read for everyone. At least it faces more general problems of the computer age society than coding and the quest for the ultimate programming language. Instead, it's about how to get rich for example. Or about why nerds are unpopular - which was the first chapter that I just finished to read.
If life seems awful to kids, it's neither because hormones are turning you all into monsters (as your parents believe), nor because life actually is awful (as you believe). It's because the adults, who no longer have any economic use for you, have abandoned you to spend years cooped up together with nothing real to do. Any society of that type is awful to live in. You don't have to look any further to explain why teenage kids are unhappy.
I really like Graham's writing style. Not only that he uses humorous as well as very neat (art/philosophy) historical metaphors/references (For example: Did you know that Michelangelo had his nose broken by a bully?), he expresses his thoughts in a provocative way. Yes, it really makes you think.
For example:
Alberti, arguably the archetype of the Renaissance Man, writes that "no art, however minor, demands less than total dedication if you want to excel in it." I wonder if anyone in the world works harder at anything than American school kids work at popularity.
Well, isn't that reminding you a lot of MySpace somehow? I started at least wondering about if this is maybe one of the major resaons for the huge success of that plattform...
Anyway, this my book recommendation for you. If you don't want to buy the book (even though it has the wonderful Bruegel painting Tower of Babel on its cover which I recognized at once to be part of the big Bruegel collection in Vienna's Kunsthistorisches Museum by the way - yeah, arthistorian me!!), feel free to read one or the other essay by Graham on his website ;)
janis - 20. Mär, 14:49
