Dabblers And Blowhards (Idle Words)

BRANK

04.04.2005Dabblers And BlowhardsI actually worry a lot that as I get "popular" I'll be able to get away with saying stupider stuff than I would have dared say before. This sort of thing happens to a lot of people, and I would *really* like to avoid it- Paul Graham, posting on lemonodor.comAbout two years ago, the Lisp programmer and dot-com millionaire Paul Graham wrote an essay entitled Hackers and Painters, in which he argues that his approach to computer programming is better described by analogies to the visual arts than by the phrase "computer science".When this essay came out, I was working as a computer programmer, and since I had also spent a few years as a full-time oil painter, everybody who read the article and knew me sent along the hyperlink. I didn't particularly enjoy the essay — I thought the overall tone was glib, and I found the parallel to painting unconvincing — but it didn't seem like anything worth getting worked up about. Just another programmer writing …