“Hackers and artists”, “On Lisp” and essay in Russian. Learning to write like Paul Graham

2.33 The Other Road Ahead
2.12 How to Make Wealth
1.91 Succinctness is Power
1.74 A Unified Theory of VC Suckage
1.73 The Word "Hacker"
1.67 How to Start a Startup
1.43 Hiring is Obsolete
1.39 Why Startups Condense in America
1.39 Programming Bottom-Up
1.35 Inequality and Risk
1.35 How to Be Silicon Valley
1.21 After the Ladder
1.04 How To Do You Love
1.00 Good and Bad Procrastination ( Good and Bad Procrastination )
0.90 After Credentials
0.88 The Equity Equation
0.88 How Not to Die
0.84 What You'll Wish You'd Known
0.83 A Plan for Spam
0.80 How to Be an Angel Investor
0.76 Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy
0.74 The High-Res Society
0.67 The Python Paradox
0.65 Ideas for Startups
0.64 Better Bayesian Filtering
0.64 Filters that Fight Back
0.61 Relentlessly Resourceful
0.61 The Future of Web Startups
0.61 The Hundred-Year Language
0.60 Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas
0.59 The Submarine
0.59 The Power of the Marginal
0.59 How to Fund a Startup
0.56 Why TV Lost
0.56 High Resolution Fundraising
0.56 Being Popular
0.56 stuff
0.56 Trolls
0.49 Why There Aren't More Googles
0.49 The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups
0.48 The Top Idea in Your Mind
0.48 Hackers and Painters
0.47 What the Bubble Got Right
0.46 Five Questions about Language Design
0.46 The Venture Capital Squeeze
0.45 Cities and Ambition
0.44 Startups in 13 Sentences
0.44 A Fundraising Survival Guide
0.44 The Hacker's Guide to Investors
0.43 Design and Research
0.43 Two Kinds of Judgment
0.40 An Alternative Theory of Unions
0.38 Can You Buy a Silicon Valley? Maybe.
0.38 Why to Move to a Startup Hub
0.35 Founder Control
0.35 Why to Not Not Start a Startup
0.34 What Business Can Learn from Open Source

Jessica Livingston ( Talk about Jessica Livingston )
A Way to Detect Bias ( Method to reveal bias )
Write Like You Talk ( Write as you say )
Default Alive or Default Dead?
Why is it profitable for a startup to be generous?
Change Your Name
What is this Microsoft Altair Basic of? ( What did Altair BASIC mean to Microsoft? )
The Ronco Principle ( Ronco Principles )
What Doesn't Seem Like Work? ( Minor oddities: how to find the business of your life )
Don't Talk to Corp Dev ( Do not talk to corporate development specialists )
Let the Other 95% of Great Programmers In
How to Be an Expert in a Changing World ( How to stay an expert in an ever-changing world )
How you know
The Fatal Pinch ( Last Drop )
Mean People Fail ( Why do scoundrels lose? )
Before the Startup ( Before a startup - part one , Before a startup - part two )
How to Raise Money (“How to raise money.” Part 1 , Part 2 , Part 3. )
Investor Herd Dynamics ( Investor as a herd animal )
How to Convince Investors ( How to convince investors )
Do Things that Don't Scale ( Do things that do not scale , an alternative , on Habré )
Startup Investing Trends ( What has changed in the world of startups , Trends in investing in startups )
How to Get Startup Ideas (How to find an idea for a startup. Part one , part two , part three , part four ))
The Hardware Renaissance ( Iron Renaissance )
Startup = Growth ( Why "hairdresser" can not be a startup. Part 1 , In pursuit of growth. Part 2 )
Black Swan Farming ( How to distinguish brilliant business ideas from worthless ones )
The Top of My Todo List
Writing and Speaking ( How to write well and speak well )
Defining property
Frighteningly Ambitious Startup Ideas ( Startling Ambitious Ideas )
A Word to the Resourceful
Schlep Blindness ( Boredom Blindness )
Snapshot: Viaweb, June 1998
Why Startup Hubs Work ( How Startup Incubators Work )
The Patent Pledge
Subject: Airbnb
Founder Control ( Does the founder need to retain control of the company? )
Tablets (94% Tablets )
What we look for in Founders ( What are we looking for in startups and young entrepreneurs? )
The New Funding Landscape
Where to See Silicon Valley
High Resolution Fundraising
What Happened to Yahoo ( What happened to Yahoo )
The Future of Startup Funding
The Acceleration of Addictiveness
The Top Idea in Your Mind (the main idea )
How to Lose Time and Money ( UPD September 7. How to lose time and money , an alternative to Giktatimes)
Organic Startup Ideas ( Ideas for an "organic" startup )
Apple's Mistake ( Apple Error )
What Startups Are Really Like ( What is the life of a real startup )
Persuade xor Discover
Post-Medium Publishing
The List of N Things
The Anatomy of Determination ( Anatomy of Purpose )
What Kate Saw in Silicon Valley ( What Kate saw in Silicon Valley )
The Trouble with the Segway
Ramen Profitable ( Startup on Doshirak )
Maker's Schedule, Manager's Schedule ( How a creator’s life differs from a manager’s )
A Local Revolution?
Why Twitter is a Big Deal
The founder visa
Five founders
Relentlessly Resourceful ( Be tirelessly resourceful. 40% translated in draft. )
How to Be an Angel Investor ( What does it mean to be a “business angel” )
Why TV Lost ( Why TV died )
Can You Buy a Silicon Valley? Maybe. (25% Can I buy Silicon Valley? Possible )
What I've Learned from Hacker News ( What I learned from Hacker News )
Startups in 13 Sentences ( 13 main principles in the life of a startup )
Keep Your Identity Small ( translation )
After credentials
Could VC be a Casualty of the Recession? ( Can venture capitalists be victims of a crisis? )
The High-Res Society ( High-tech Society )
The Other Half of “Artists Ship”
Why to Start a Startup in a Bad Economy ( Why start a startup during a crisis )
A Fundraising Survival Guide ( Survival Guide for Investors )
The Pooled-Risk Company Management Company ( Management company with a combined insurance fund )
Cities and Ambition ( Cities and Ambitions )
Disconnecting Distraction ( Disconnecting from distractions )
Lies We Tell Kids ( False We Tell Children )
Be Good ( Be Good )
Why There Aren't More Googles ( Why don't new Google appear )
Some Heroes (51% My Heroes )
How to Disagree ( How to disagree )
You Weren't Meant to Have a Boss ( You Were Not Born Subordinate )
A New Venture Animal ( New Beast Among Venture Investors )
Trolls
Six Principles for Making New Things ( Six Principles for Making New Things )
Why to Move to a Startup Hub ( Why move a startup )
The Future of Web Startups ( The Future of Internet Startups )
How to Do Philosophy ( How are things with philosophy )
News from the Front
How Not to Die ( How not to die )
Holding a Program in One's Head ( Holding a project in my head )
Stuff ( Junk , Things )
The equity equation
An alternative theory of unions
The Hacker's Guide to Investors
Two Kinds of Judgment ( Two types of judgments )
Microsoft is Dead ( Microsoft is dead )
Why not to start a startup?
Is it worth being wise? ( Is it worth being wise? )
Learning from Founders
How Art Can Be Good
The 18 Mistakes That Kill Startups ( Mistakes that kill startups )
A Student's Guide to Startups
How to Present to Investors ( How to make a presentation for investors )
Copy What You Like ( Copy what you like )
The island test
The Power of the Marginal ( The Power of the Marginal )
Why Startups Condense in America ( Why startups are concentrated in America )
How to Be Silicon Valley ( How to Be a Silicon Valley )
The Hardest Lessons for Startups to Learn ( The most difficult lessons for startups )
See Randomness
Are Software Patents Evil?
6,631,372
Why YC ( Why Y Combinator? )
How to Do What You Love ( How to do what you love but so that there is nothing for it )
Good and Bad Procrastination ( Good and bad procrastination )
Web 2.0 ( Web 2.0 )
How to Fund a Startup ( How to finance a startup? )
The Venture Capital Squeeze
Ideas for Startups ( Ideas for a startup )
What I Did This Summer
Inequality and Risk
After the ladder
What Business Can Learn from Open Source ( What business could take from free software , Work real and imaginary , Bottom up )
Hiring is Obsolete ( Outdated )
The submarine
Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas ( Why smart ideas come to mind to smart people )
Return of the Mac ( Return of the Mac )
Writing, Briefly (<Translation at the end of the article)
Undergraduation
A Unified Theory of VC Suckage
How to Start a Startup ( How to start a new business )
What You'll Wish You'd Known ( What you would like to know in advance )
Made in USA ( Made in the USA )
It's Charisma, Stupid
Bradley's ghost
A Version 1.0
What the Bubble Got Right ( What the Internet boom turned out to be right about )
The Age of the Essay ( Age of Essay )
The Python Paradox ( Python Paradox )
Great Hackers ( Crack Hackers , Part 2 )
Mind the Gap ( “Be careful, break” )
How to Make Wealth ( How to become rich )
The Word “Hacker”
What You Can't Say ( What You Can't Tell About )
Filters that Fight Back
Hackers and Painters (translation part 1 , part 2 , alternative )
If lisp is so great
The Hundred-Year Language ( programming languages ​​in a hundred years , the programming language of the future - today )
Why Nerds are Unpopular ( Why don't they like nerds , Why are nerds unpopular? )
Better bayesian filtering
Design and Research
A Plan for Spam ( Spam Plan )
Revenge of the Nerds (Revenge of the nerds, part 1 )
Succinctness is Power ( Short - Power )
What Languages ​​Fix ( What programming languages ​​solve )
Taste for Makers ( Taste is for creators )
Why Arc Isn't Especially Object-Oriented
What Made Lisp Different
The other road ahead
The Roots of Lisp
Five Questions about Language Design
Being Popular (Being Popular, part 1 , part 2 )
Java's Cover
Beating the Averages ( Lisp: defeating mediocrity )
Lisp for Web Based Applications ( Lisp for Web Applications )
Chapter 1 of Ansi Common Lisp
Chapter 2 of Ansi Common Lisp
Programming Bottom-Up

“It’s not a matter of course,” he says. It is a fascinating place. ”

- Eric Raymond, author of the Cathedral and the Bazaar

"This is a book on the nature of computer programming."

- Robert Morris (creator of the first network worm), MIT

“Paul Graham is a hacker, a painter, and a terrific writer. It is a lucid humor, it is a humorous pattern. Hey. "

- Andy Hertzfeld, co-creator of the Macintosh

“Since programmers create programs out of nothing, imagination is our only limitation. Thus, in the world of programming, Paul Graham is one of our contemporary heroes. Express it plainly. His works are my favorites, especially the ones describing language design. He explains the nature of the hacker experience. This book shows you the truth about the nature of hacking. "

- Yukihiro "Matz" Matsumoto, creator of Ruby

“So I couldn’t make it, I suspect it would be a computer Millionaire? It would certainly be apt. ”

- Aaron Swartz

It’s not a matter of course if you’re learning about it. You can’t make a smile. Highly recommended to anyone. ”

- Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda, Creator / Director, Slashdot

sneak away

Why Nerds Are Unpopular . The school is a prison run by the prisoners themselves. Its only purpose is to take something children while the parents are at work. In order not to be at the bottom of the hierarchy, it is necessary to expend efforts to maintain status. But other activities are interesting to smart children, there is no time left for the image, and they find themselves below.
The article is harsh, but with a touch of optimism. Awareness of the situation is the first step to correcting it. Who has friends teenagers, give them this article.

Hackers and Painters. Computer Science and programming are different things. It's bad when eggheads rate hackers by their criteria. Even worse, when hackers themselves evaluate so.
“Hackers on the pipeline” is also far from the best option. “Big companies do not win because they do great things. They win because they suck less than other big companies. ”
It is best to rate hackers as writers or artists. And hackers should learn from them. What exactly is the second part of the article.

What You Can't Say . Anytime, anywhere, there are ideas that should not be advertised. If you have no such ideas, you are brainwashed. And what if there is?

Good Bad Attitude . Well, when there are people who are ready to break the rules.

The Other Road Ahead . Web as a new environment for creating and delivering programs. What are the prospects open to startups.

How to Make Wealth . A startup is a way to compress all of your usual long working life in a few years.
To earn a lot, you need to create value. A sign that a startup is on the right track is the presence of users.

Mind the Gap . A small but interstitial article. The idea that wealth and the amount of money are completely different things are pretty obvious. But the consequences - no.
Is it bad when some people earn many times more than others? Not! On the contrary, in the modern world, a huge difference in income is an indication that society is healthy and has not slipped into stagnation.
There are a few more ideas about the wealth of the state and its inhabitants, but I'd rather give you a funny quote. “If Lenin had wandered around the offices of companies such as Yahoo, Intel or Cisco, he would have thought that communism had won. All wear the same clothes, sit in the same type of offices (more precisely, in the booths) with monotonous furniture, refer to each other by name, not title. Everything looks as he predicted, until you look at the bank accounts. Oops. "

A Plan for Spam . With this article begins the glorious history of Bayesian spam filters. Now it’s hard to imagine how we lived without them, and therefore it’s funny to read phrases like “I hope this method will work”.

Taste for Makers . It is said that tastes are not argued, but in fact everything beautiful has common features.

Programming Languages ​​Explained . Paul Graham expresses his attitude to some concepts related to programming languages.

The Hundred-Year Language . A programming language is not a technology, but a way of presenting thoughts. Therefore, languages ​​change slowly, and you can evaluate what awaits us in the future.

Beating the Averages . The article is like an article, but for some reason I re-read it many times, with something it touches. About why Lisp is the coolest, why its use gives a competitive advantage, and why few people know about its use in real life.

Revenge of the Nerds . As a theoretical toy, it suddenly became a programming language, or again about why Lisp is the coolest.

The Dream Language . How to create a popular programming language.

Design and Research . How design development differs from scientific research (convenience versus novelty), and how to approach design.

Many ask for my advice on how to write.
How important is it to be able to express thoughts smoothly and how can one become the best writer?

In the process of answering this question, I accidentally wrote a tiny essay on this topic.
Usually, I spend on writing an essay of the week. But it took 67 minutes - 23 to write and 44 to rewrite. And it went online only as an experiment, since it is very capacious, at a minimum.

I think writing is much more important than many people assume. Any literary form does not simply convey ideas, its very creation generates them. And if you do not express your thoughts well in a letter and you do not like this process, then you will miss many of the ideas that would come to you during literary writing.

But a brief recipe for "how to be a good writer":

• quickly write the worst option
• rewrite it again and again
• discard all unnecessary
• write in a conversational manner,
• you need to develop the scent on a bad style to find it in your works,
• imitate the authors you like,
• if it's hard to start, tell someone about the future topic and write down your words,
• expect that 80% of the ideas will come to you at the time of writing and that half of the source will be wrong,
• confidently cut the text
• Give your friends your creativity and let them tell you what bothers them or slows them down
• do not (always) make detailed sketches,
• leave ideas warm for a few days before the start of creativity,
• Carry a notebook or sheets of paper,
• start writing at the moment you think about the first phrase, and if time is running out, then start with the most important thought,
• write about what you like,
• don't try to make a deep impression
• Do not hesitate to change the theme for the fly,
• use footnotes to deviate from the topic
• use anaphora to connect sentences
• read your essay out loud to identify poorly readable phrases and boring parts (those paragraphs that are scary to read),
• tell the reader something new and useful,
• write long
• re-read already existing before rewriting,
• complete the difficult phase of work in order to start the next morning with something light,
• consider the topics you are going to cover at the end,
• do not consider it your duty to disassemble at least any of them,
• write for the reader who will not read as carefully as you (like pop music that sounds normal on a crappy car radio),
• correct your mistakes immediately
• Let your friends point you to the phrase that you regret most,
• go back and soften the harsh comments,
• Post your creations online, as your audience will force you to write more and create more ideas
• print the sketches instead of reading them from the screen,
• use simple, common words,
• learn to distinguish surprise and deviations from the topic,
• learn to recognize the proximity of the final, and use it as soon as possible.