7 ms·

Dabblers and Blowhards - A Criticism of PG

62 points by smanek 18y ago

deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
SwellJoe 18y ago
I've always felt the painters connection was too tightly focused, though I think this essay (which is ancient, and would either be more true of pg's work today or less depending on how much you agree with it) goes overboard and manages to miss the point. The bone that I do think can be picked with Hackers and Painters is that there just aren't very many hackers who are also painters. In fact, I only know one: pg. I know literally dozens of hackers who are musicians and four who are writers (oh, wait...pg makes it five). It seems to me that if the two categories of people were so alike, there would be significant overlap, but there is very little that I'm aware of. If you take "creative, systematic, and challenging pursuits" as a whole, however, you begin to see a lot more overlap (and again, musicians overlap a lot with hackers, moreso than any other "creative, systematic, and challenging pursuit"). Maybe because I'm a musician and a hacker (by some definition of "musician" and "hacker") I'm seeing all of these connections in the same way that pg, who is a painter and a hacker, sees connections between his two loves. It all makes sense when you're looking at your own likes and dislikes, but nobody else will really understand exactly what you see in your hobbies.
- pg 18y ago
  Interesting question. Probably one reason there are a lot more hacker/musicians than hacker/painters is that there are a lot more musicians than painters. Painting is not exactly a flourishing field at the moment. But there are a significant number of hackers who are good at graphic design. The thing I was saying hackers and painters had in common was that they're both makers. As opposed to the idea prevalent when I was in college, that programming was applied math. I believe it was in protest against this idea that Knuth called his books The Art of Computer Programming.
  - wheels 18y ago
    As a hacker / musician and one who's tried my hand at painting, at least painting as it exists in culture at the moment tends to be less analytical than current approaches to music (which are very analytical). I think the balance might be shifted if we were looking at painting in for instance the Bauhaus movement, or classical painting. That said, as someone who's also pretty serious about music and hacking, while there are similarities in being able to work from an idea and bring that to realization, there are gaps in that programming is functional; music needn't be. In that I see programming as closer to architecture than to painting or music.
  - SwellJoe 18y ago
    But there are a significant number of hackers who are good at graphic design. Righteous argument. If painting, as an art form, has been replaced by graphic design, then clearly there is significant overlap, and probably on the same order as musicians. I don't know how much I believe "painters", as a class, have become "designers", since almost none of the painters I knew in high school (I went to a school for fine arts, so I knew a lot of painters) have since become digital artists, but that may be just a sign of my age...I was among the last generation of kids that didn't grow up using computers daily. Anyway, as I mentioned, I think the primary problem is that "painters" is too specific...though it makes for a better title than "Hackers and People Who Make Art of Some Kind". When you open it up to include designers and other visual artists, musicians (like Knuth, who has a massive pipe organ in his house and plays it beautifully), and writers, the overlap becomes very nearly 100%. Every hacker of note that I can think of off the top of my head has at least one of these as a hobby, particularly if you allow "visual arts" to include things like robotics, DIY electronics with an artistic purpose, 3D modeling, etc. As you've said, hackers are makers, and it often spills over into other kinds of production.
    - pg 18y ago
      hackers are makers, and it often spills over into other kinds of production Yes, definitely. I think hackers may be more like architects than painters, for example. The reason I wrote about the connection between hacking and painting is that I understand painting fairly well. I haven't studied architecture. The core of this Dabblers & Blowhards thing is a strawman argument. He claims I say the connection between hacking and painting is much stronger than I do, then "proves" it isn't. When in fact all I say is: of all the different types of people I've known, hackers and painters are among the most alike. (http://paulgraham.com/hp.html http://paulgraham.com/hp.html)
- shaunxcode 18y ago
  what about "Hackers and Graffiti Artists"? That would make also make sense on a lot of levels depending on your definition of graffiti and hacking.
- narag 18y ago
  >here just aren't very many hackers who are also painters. I'd raise the hand for, as you say, "for some definition of" hacker, painter, writer and musician. And for any of slacker :-) I only program now, though. Edit: oops! half the commentary disappeared before. I was going to say that painting (and composing music and writing) is really alike to programming, IMHO at least. I haven't read Paul Graham's book so I don't know if it has the same things that I feel alike. But the fact that there is a visible result and that result must "work" and the means are mostly a thought product, it's all the same. And there are also other similarities of the joy that I feel when doing any of these things that I couldn't express easily. You would think that what means that the result "works" is different, that it's easier to have objetive measure of a working program than a "working painting". In fact it's not very clear in most companies. If the sales dept. can fool one customer to buy some crap (or undone) software for a fortune, that'd be "working". Not better than "art market".
- bootload 18y ago
  "... I've always felt the painters connection was too tightly focused, though I think this essay (which is ancient, and would either be more true of pg's work today or less depending on how much you agree with it) goes overboard and manages to miss the point ..." I don't think the hacker/painter correlation is far off the mark. We might not know of many painters who can hack but I think the idea might better be illustrated by someone who could be best described as a "Hacker" in his day. Leonardo. Leonardo had lots of attributes you could ascribe to modern day Hackers: - inately curious (how else would you work out how the human heart valves worked or the observation that the hardening and constriction of the minute capillaries in old people (compared to young babies) has something to do with death. Something that modern science had to re-discover. - wrote excessively in notebook diaries on ideas and creations he was working on. (I've seen a sample of these diaries as part of the Royal Library collection. Images of cross sections from human skulls to yet to be born in-eutero.) - sketched out his ideas as a combination of pictures and words (using silverpoint on vellum: a prepared animal hide covered with ground up animal bones and glue. then built upon these prior ideas as finished works) - emperical in outlook and willing to try new ideas: that is he observed what worked and not just theorised or accepted common wisdom. A good example of this can be found in the paint composition of "The Last Supper". Leonardo decided "fresco" didn't allow him to express his painterly style, shunned the conventional and tried "fresco" over "gesso" (gypsum). In this case it failed miserably. But this ability to experiment also allowed Leonardo to master oils. The results of this stable medium you can see today in "La Gioconda" in the Louvre in Paris. - exhibited unnatural powers of concentration (shunning food, rest and drink for instance during the painting of "The Last Supper".) - mastery of numerous different technologies The key bit that most people might not realise is that for Leonardo, painting was his technological multiplier. Leonardo expressed his sketches as drawings and words and presented finished ideas in paint. It is through the act of painting that we recognise the most famous painting of the Renaissance. I think the key to understanding the relationship between hackers and painters is that the expression of the intangible thought through art is what matters. Painting and drawing of ideas is to Leonardo as Macs are to modern day hackers. The product might be different but in the end both, modern Hacker and Leonardo as painter create new, seemingly intangible things from pure thought. I'm not surprised pg went to study in Florence. What does surprise me is why it took so long to realise that it was not the location that elevated Leonardo but the "tech revolution" of the time, painting.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
timr 18y ago
Aha...I knew I'd read this before! It's linked in the article from this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=143148 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=143148 which spawned a large comment thread that's probably worth referencing here.
timcederman 18y ago
From the article - you can't say hackers figure out both "what" and "how" in most cases. Usually there is a designer and/or usability expert who figures out what.
- IsaacSchlueter 18y ago
  I don't think he did say that -- rather that in the best case, they do both.
zasz 18y ago
I draw a little bit, and I couldn't see anything wrong with pg stating the following: "Most painters start with a blurry sketch and gradually refine it." Unless the author or some other great painter manages to get it perfectly right from the very first stroke? I only draw, I don't paint, but I can definitely see similarities between going through iterations and drafts in programming and art.
- narag 18y ago
  That's indeed the way current painters work. I think what the author says is that it wasn't when oil paint was invented.
  - zasz 18y ago
    Yes, but the only refutation I think he has is this little footnote saying that underneath the layer of paint is a super-precise line drawing. I would be incredulous to hear that super-precise line drawing was not a refinement of a blurrier one that just set out the basic idea.
sapphirecat 18y ago
Is the author of that "criticism" trying to parody what they see in PG's writing? It could just as easily be self-referential.
r7000 18y ago
I immediately assumed the analogy was meant to portray hackers as 'makers', artisans etc. in order to broaden the readers perception of what a hacker was or could be. I was immediately interested in finding out where the author was going to take the idea and was pleasantly surprised. An analogy is used to quickly open up the reader's mind and prepare them to think about something in a new way. Was this one perfect? None are. Did it work? Yes. This article, on the other hand, is merely one in a long line of internet articles that purposely refuse to get the point of what they are criticizing. On a personal note. I read H&P while taking breaks from driving on a cross-Canada trip. My original driving partner is a painter. He had to drop out and a hacker friend took his place and brought along the book. I thought it was amusing at the time and told him the title would have been more appropriate before the change.
tdavis 18y ago
I find it hard to believe this isn't a bit of participatory narcissism considering he goes to great lengths to point out how often artists get laid. Which also couldn't possibly be an overly-broad generalization. Although he gets a point for the use of "weenis." Pot: Kettle, you are black, sir!
- tptacek 18y ago
  It's parody. He's simultaneously pointing out the grandiosity of Graham's allusions, taking the piss out of them by comparison, and mirroring Graham's style to do it. It's a really nice piece of writing, and it's even more fun if you read it with a copy of Hackers and Painters next to it to spot the references.
erdos2 18y ago
The author misses the point that PG's essays are not intended to be understood literally, but as literature, to be appreciated on an aesthetic level only.
tptacek 18y ago
Did any of you catch the Minnaert recommendation, for "Light and Color In The Outdoors", the author's notion of a strong work about the connection between programming and art? I bought a used copy for Erin, and it was pretty awesome. Did any of you read it? What did you think?

62 points by smanek 18y ago

deleted 18y ago

[deleted]

I've always felt the painters connection was too tightly focused, though I think this essay (which is ancient, and would either be more true of pg's work today or less depending on how much you agree with it) goes overboard and manages to miss the point. The bone that I do think can be picked with Hackers and Painters is that there just aren't very many hackers who are also painters. In fact, I only know one: pg. I know literally dozens of hackers who are musicians and four who are writers (oh, wait...pg makes it five). It seems to me that if the two categories of people were so alike, there would be significant overlap, but there is very little that I'm aware of. If you take "creative, systematic, and challenging pursuits" as a whole, however, you begin to see a lot more overlap (and again, musicians overlap a lot with hackers, moreso than any other "creative, systematic, and challenging pursuit"). Maybe because I'm a musician and a hacker (by some definition of "musician" and "hacker") I'm seeing all of these connections in the same way that pg, who is a painter and a hacker, sees connections between his two loves. It all makes sense when you're looking at your own likes and dislikes, but nobody else will really understand exactly what you see in your hobbies.

pg 18y ago
Interesting question. Probably one reason there are a lot more hacker/musicians than hacker/painters is that there are a lot more musicians than painters. Painting is not exactly a flourishing field at the moment. But there are a significant number of hackers who are good at graphic design. The thing I was saying hackers and painters had in common was that they're both makers. As opposed to the idea prevalent when I was in college, that programming was applied math. I believe it was in protest against this idea that Knuth called his books The Art of Computer Programming.
- wheels 18y ago
  As a hacker / musician and one who's tried my hand at painting, at least painting as it exists in culture at the moment tends to be less analytical than current approaches to music (which are very analytical). I think the balance might be shifted if we were looking at painting in for instance the Bauhaus movement, or classical painting. That said, as someone who's also pretty serious about music and hacking, while there are similarities in being able to work from an idea and bring that to realization, there are gaps in that programming is functional; music needn't be. In that I see programming as closer to architecture than to painting or music.
- SwellJoe 18y ago
  But there are a significant number of hackers who are good at graphic design. Righteous argument. If painting, as an art form, has been replaced by graphic design, then clearly there is significant overlap, and probably on the same order as musicians. I don't know how much I believe "painters", as a class, have become "designers", since almost none of the painters I knew in high school (I went to a school for fine arts, so I knew a lot of painters) have since become digital artists, but that may be just a sign of my age...I was among the last generation of kids that didn't grow up using computers daily. Anyway, as I mentioned, I think the primary problem is that "painters" is too specific...though it makes for a better title than "Hackers and People Who Make Art of Some Kind". When you open it up to include designers and other visual artists, musicians (like Knuth, who has a massive pipe organ in his house and plays it beautifully), and writers, the overlap becomes very nearly 100%. Every hacker of note that I can think of off the top of my head has at least one of these as a hobby, particularly if you allow "visual arts" to include things like robotics, DIY electronics with an artistic purpose, 3D modeling, etc. As you've said, hackers are makers, and it often spills over into other kinds of production.
  - pg 18y ago
    hackers are makers, and it often spills over into other kinds of production Yes, definitely. I think hackers may be more like architects than painters, for example. The reason I wrote about the connection between hacking and painting is that I understand painting fairly well. I haven't studied architecture. The core of this Dabblers & Blowhards thing is a strawman argument. He claims I say the connection between hacking and painting is much stronger than I do, then "proves" it isn't. When in fact all I say is: of all the different types of people I've known, hackers and painters are among the most alike. (http://paulgraham.com/hp.html http://paulgraham.com/hp.html)
shaunxcode 18y ago
what about "Hackers and Graffiti Artists"? That would make also make sense on a lot of levels depending on your definition of graffiti and hacking.
narag 18y ago
>here just aren't very many hackers who are also painters. I'd raise the hand for, as you say, "for some definition of" hacker, painter, writer and musician. And for any of slacker :-) I only program now, though. Edit: oops! half the commentary disappeared before. I was going to say that painting (and composing music and writing) is really alike to programming, IMHO at least. I haven't read Paul Graham's book so I don't know if it has the same things that I feel alike. But the fact that there is a visible result and that result must "work" and the means are mostly a thought product, it's all the same. And there are also other similarities of the joy that I feel when doing any of these things that I couldn't express easily. You would think that what means that the result "works" is different, that it's easier to have objetive measure of a working program than a "working painting". In fact it's not very clear in most companies. If the sales dept. can fool one customer to buy some crap (or undone) software for a fortune, that'd be "working". Not better than "art market".
bootload 18y ago
"... I've always felt the painters connection was too tightly focused, though I think this essay (which is ancient, and would either be more true of pg's work today or less depending on how much you agree with it) goes overboard and manages to miss the point ..." I don't think the hacker/painter correlation is far off the mark. We might not know of many painters who can hack but I think the idea might better be illustrated by someone who could be best described as a "Hacker" in his day. Leonardo. Leonardo had lots of attributes you could ascribe to modern day Hackers: - inately curious (how else would you work out how the human heart valves worked or the observation that the hardening and constriction of the minute capillaries in old people (compared to young babies) has something to do with death. Something that modern science had to re-discover. - wrote excessively in notebook diaries on ideas and creations he was working on. (I've seen a sample of these diaries as part of the Royal Library collection. Images of cross sections from human skulls to yet to be born in-eutero.) - sketched out his ideas as a combination of pictures and words (using silverpoint on vellum: a prepared animal hide covered with ground up animal bones and glue. then built upon these prior ideas as finished works) - emperical in outlook and willing to try new ideas: that is he observed what worked and not just theorised or accepted common wisdom. A good example of this can be found in the paint composition of "The Last Supper". Leonardo decided "fresco" didn't allow him to express his painterly style, shunned the conventional and tried "fresco" over "gesso" (gypsum). In this case it failed miserably. But this ability to experiment also allowed Leonardo to master oils. The results of this stable medium you can see today in "La Gioconda" in the Louvre in Paris. - exhibited unnatural powers of concentration (shunning food, rest and drink for instance during the painting of "The Last Supper".) - mastery of numerous different technologies The key bit that most people might not realise is that for Leonardo, painting was his technological multiplier. Leonardo expressed his sketches as drawings and words and presented finished ideas in paint. It is through the act of painting that we recognise the most famous painting of the Renaissance. I think the key to understanding the relationship between hackers and painters is that the expression of the intangible thought through art is what matters. Painting and drawing of ideas is to Leonardo as Macs are to modern day hackers. The product might be different but in the end both, modern Hacker and Leonardo as painter create new, seemingly intangible things from pure thought. I'm not surprised pg went to study in Florence. What does surprise me is why it took so long to realise that it was not the location that elevated Leonardo but the "tech revolution" of the time, painting.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]

timr 18y ago

Aha...I knew I'd read this before! It's linked in the article from this post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=143148 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=143148 which spawned a large comment thread that's probably worth referencing here.

timcederman 18y ago

From the article - you can't say hackers figure out both "what" and "how" in most cases. Usually there is a designer and/or usability expert who figures out what.

IsaacSchlueter 18y ago
I don't think he did say that -- rather that in the best case, they do both.

zasz 18y ago

I draw a little bit, and I couldn't see anything wrong with pg stating the following: "Most painters start with a blurry sketch and gradually refine it." Unless the author or some other great painter manages to get it perfectly right from the very first stroke? I only draw, I don't paint, but I can definitely see similarities between going through iterations and drafts in programming and art.

narag 18y ago
That's indeed the way current painters work. I think what the author says is that it wasn't when oil paint was invented.
- zasz 18y ago
  Yes, but the only refutation I think he has is this little footnote saying that underneath the layer of paint is a super-precise line drawing. I would be incredulous to hear that super-precise line drawing was not a refinement of a blurrier one that just set out the basic idea.

sapphirecat 18y ago

Is the author of that "criticism" trying to parody what they see in PG's writing? It could just as easily be self-referential.

r7000 18y ago

I immediately assumed the analogy was meant to portray hackers as 'makers', artisans etc. in order to broaden the readers perception of what a hacker was or could be. I was immediately interested in finding out where the author was going to take the idea and was pleasantly surprised. An analogy is used to quickly open up the reader's mind and prepare them to think about something in a new way. Was this one perfect? None are. Did it work? Yes. This article, on the other hand, is merely one in a long line of internet articles that purposely refuse to get the point of what they are criticizing. On a personal note. I read H&P while taking breaks from driving on a cross-Canada trip. My original driving partner is a painter. He had to drop out and a hacker friend took his place and brought along the book. I thought it was amusing at the time and told him the title would have been more appropriate before the change.

tdavis 18y ago

I find it hard to believe this isn't a bit of participatory narcissism considering he goes to great lengths to point out how often artists get laid. Which also couldn't possibly be an overly-broad generalization. Although he gets a point for the use of "weenis." Pot: Kettle, you are black, sir!

tptacek 18y ago
It's parody. He's simultaneously pointing out the grandiosity of Graham's allusions, taking the piss out of them by comparison, and mirroring Graham's style to do it. It's a really nice piece of writing, and it's even more fun if you read it with a copy of Hackers and Painters next to it to spot the references.

erdos2 18y ago

The author misses the point that PG's essays are not intended to be understood literally, but as literature, to be appreciated on an aesthetic level only.

tptacek 18y ago

Did any of you catch the Minnaert recommendation, for "Light and Color In The Outdoors", the author's notion of a strong work about the connection between programming and art? I bought a used copy for Erin, and it was pretty awesome. Did any of you read it? What did you think?