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Paul Graham is a tedious windbag

Name: Anonymous 2016-07-19 17:22

As tawdry as it might be to descend to everyone else's level and discuss this pathetic piece of writing, where one Mr Graham decides to singlehandedly define hackerdom and those privileged enough to live there (us poor java folks just don't cut it), I feel there's just too much there not to give it a good solid harpooning.
First, this loon proclaims that all the great hackers he knows use python or some such nonsense. Well, let me contrast that with my own experience. Every single java guy I know who has advocated python is guaranteed to be middling and the kind of person who is amused by shiny baubles. The 'greatest hackers' on MY list happen to be a bunch of java guys, with lispers and erlangers thrown in. No python, no ruby, and definitely, definitely, no perl.

Even more presumptuous are his claims that hackers are some kind of holy being, that must be treated with the utmost caution and be given endless reams of open sores to play with. In his silly makebelieve world, there are no meetings that said hacker has to attend. Said hacker would never use windows voluntarily, and have all sorts of other bizarroworld properties that I suspect all happen to accidentally apply to the author himself and his friends.

He also claims that perl is the most popular language for voluntary open source work. Hmm, what backing does he have for this claim? On freshmeat in fact, where every little turd releases his open source effluent, java is in second place behind C (yes, even narrowing beating out perl). So I in turn will exercise my 'make a wild claim through determined arm-flailing' rights, and say that that proves that when hobbyists need to get things done or hack up stuff for fun, they will choose C or java in their spare time.

The whole article is offensive and ridiculous, and typical of the American attitude he so readily derides. That whole 'me and my friends are great, let me tell the world about how great we are' bullshit to try and pretend that he matters, or that his life isn't as worthless as he probably suspects, deep down inside. The feeble 'it has nothing to do with arrogance' attempts fool no one. Pauly rather obviously thinks very highly of his hackerdom and its delighful asshat citizenry.

It's quite one thing to be proud of what you do, and feel that you're at the top of your game, for some defined value of game. It's quite another to be an offensive wanker about it and think that you're some kind of special animal who matters in the grand scheme of things. You have your place, and it's not more exalted, relevant, profitable, or contributing to the general advancement of humankind than that of a pretty good salesman possibly selling a decent product. Or that of a pretty decent java developer, or a decent graphics designer.

Name: Anonymous 2016-07-19 18:19

>>1
The 'greatest hackers' on MY list happen to be a bunch of java guys
Opinion instantly discarded and stopped reading there. I'm not even interested in finding where you kopiped this from.

Name: Anonymous 2016-07-19 20:19

Check em

Name: Anonymous 2016-07-19 20:45

Paul Graham heads up a bunch of know-nothing hipsters clamoring to squeeze idiots out of money for stupid social conveniences. There is no actual new computing technology coming out of anything he does, and that includes arc and whatever little side projects he does. He has no authority to speak on anything technical at all, much less touch the word "hacker" as it applies to computing.

The whole venture capital bubble itself is a blight on the advancement of computing and the internet in general, trying to stake claim on what people do, instead of empowering users. This bubble can't pop soon enough, and I hope it takes people like PG down HARD.

Name: Anonymous 2016-07-19 21:22

Watch out for the dubs bubble

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