"In most fields the great work is done early on. The paintings made between 1430 and 1500 are still unsurpassed. Shakespeare appeared just as professional theater was being born, and pushed the medium so far that every playwright since has had to live in his shadow. Albrecht Durer did the same thing with engraving, and Jane Austen with the novel.

Table of Contents

Preface; 1. Why Nerds Are Unpopular Their minds are not on the game; 2. Hackers and Painters Hackers are makers, like painters or architects or writers; 3. What You Can't Say How to think heretical thoughts and what to do with them; 4. Good Bad Attitude Like Americans, hackers win by breaking rules; 5. The Other Road Ahead Web-based software offers the biggest opportunity since the arrival of the microcomputer; 6. How to Make Wealth The best way to get rich is to create wealth. And startups are the best way to do that; 7. Mind the Gap Could "unequal income distribution" be less of a problem than we think?; 8. A Plan for Spam Till recently most experts thought spam filtering wouldn't work. This proposal changed their minds; 9. Taste for Makers How do you make great things?; 10. Programming Languages Explained What a programming language is and why they are a hot topic now; 11. The Hundred-Year Language How will we program in a hundred years? Why not start now?; 12. Beating the Averages For web-based applications you can use whatever language you want. So can your competitors; 13. Revenge of the Nerds In technology, "industry best practice" is a recipe for losing; 14. The Dream Language A good programming language is one that lets hackers have their way with it; 15. Design and Research; Research has to be original. Design has to be good; Notes; Acknowledgments; Image credits; Glossary; Index

About the Author

Paul Graham is the designer of the Arc language. He most recently worked for Yahoo. Before that he was president of Viaweb, which became Yahoo Store when Viaweb was acquired by Yahoo in 1998. Paul is the author of On Lisp (Prentice Hall, 1993) and ANSI Common Lisp (Prentice Hall, 1995), now the standard college text. He has worked as a consultant to the US Department of Energy, DuPont, and Interleaf. He has an AB from Cornell and a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard, and studied painting at RISD and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence.