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Genuine question, what work has Paul Graham done that can be classified as 'great'?

by dtj1123 2mo ago

deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
baconbkr 2mo ago
Creating YCombinator
durdn 2mo ago
He wrote a lot about this. For example he built an e-commerce meta platform in Lisp that would allow anyone to build and customise their own shops that was far ahead of anything that existed at the time.
ignoramous 2mo ago
Per Graham's own definition, the founding to Y Combinator. Setting aside critiques, some of his influential essays ("Ramen profitable", "Do things that don't scale", "Founder mode", "Beating the averages", "Schelp blindness", etc) also fit the bill.
gus_massa 2mo ago
https://paulgraham.com/spam.html https://paulgraham.com/spam.html I think all the parts were invented by other people, but he got the right mix to make it work. It's also like the wheel. Before it was a huge problem and no one know how to solve it. Now it's invisible. Note that all modern versions use enhanced variants with a lot or trick to make it better.
- api 2mo ago
  Every invention is made of other inventions all the way back to big rock and sharp stick. So yes Bayesian spam filtering was impressive for its time. I remember it being done locally in mail clients. It’s also one of the early popular deployments of a form of “AI” but that was still during the hangover from the first AI bubble when you had to call it “machine learning.”
  - leoc 2mo ago
    Hah, remember the brief interval when SV got excited about hiring people with machine-learning skills again, and Google was hot, but "AI" was still a dirty name, so they started buzzing about hiring people with expertise in "algorithms"?
rvba 2mo ago
For me keeping Hacker News in the way it is. One of the last "inspiring" places, now that reddit is dead.
- api 2mo ago
  It’s declined in quality too but not as sharply as Reddit or the cess pools of the rest of social media.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
callmeal 2mo ago
I think it's the kind of work that (for beautiful moment in time) creates a lot of value for shareholders.
chistev 2mo ago
Hacker News.
codingdave 2mo ago
'Great' is subjective. If you care about the same things as he does, a lot of his work is great. If you care about totally different things, none of his work is great. Whatever you feel about it, it would be inaccurate to say that he has not found success. Clearly he has. So it is up to each person to decide whether or not any products of that success, including his writings, matches their own definition for 'great'.
rramadass 2mo ago
This is the problem with the modern "everything superlative" verbiage. The Press, Social Media, The Public all are to blame for encouraging this. Everything is hyped up and hence the words lose their true meaning. You are somewhat smart in one specific domain; you are a "Genius". You are successful in something; you are the "Greatest". You fail in something; you are a "Loser". You make one single mistake; you are "Dumb". It is almost as if we have forgotten how we got here viz. lots of trial-and-error, sheer persistence, extreme specialization, building theories, sharing knowledge, building teams, focusing on goals, good dose of luck, etc.

Genuine question, what work has Paul Graham done that can be classified as 'great'?

by dtj1123 2mo ago

Genuine question, what work has Paul Graham done that can be classified as 'great'?

deleted 2mo ago

[deleted]

baconbkr 2mo ago

Creating YCombinator

durdn 2mo ago

He wrote a lot about this. For example he built an e-commerce meta platform in Lisp that would allow anyone to build and customise their own shops that was far ahead of anything that existed at the time.

ignoramous 2mo ago

Per Graham's own definition, the founding to Y Combinator. Setting aside critiques, some of his influential essays ("Ramen profitable", "Do things that don't scale", "Founder mode", "Beating the averages", "Schelp blindness", etc) also fit the bill.

gus_massa 2mo ago

https://paulgraham.com/spam.html https://paulgraham.com/spam.html I think all the parts were invented by other people, but he got the right mix to make it work. It's also like the wheel. Before it was a huge problem and no one know how to solve it. Now it's invisible. Note that all modern versions use enhanced variants with a lot or trick to make it better.

api 2mo ago
Every invention is made of other inventions all the way back to big rock and sharp stick. So yes Bayesian spam filtering was impressive for its time. I remember it being done locally in mail clients. It’s also one of the early popular deployments of a form of “AI” but that was still during the hangover from the first AI bubble when you had to call it “machine learning.”
- leoc 2mo ago
  Hah, remember the brief interval when SV got excited about hiring people with machine-learning skills again, and Google was hot, but "AI" was still a dirty name, so they started buzzing about hiring people with expertise in "algorithms"?

rvba 2mo ago

For me keeping Hacker News in the way it is. One of the last "inspiring" places, now that reddit is dead.

api 2mo ago
It’s declined in quality too but not as sharply as Reddit or the cess pools of the rest of social media.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]

callmeal 2mo ago

I think it's the kind of work that (for beautiful moment in time) creates a lot of value for shareholders.

chistev 2mo ago

Hacker News.

codingdave 2mo ago

'Great' is subjective. If you care about the same things as he does, a lot of his work is great. If you care about totally different things, none of his work is great. Whatever you feel about it, it would be inaccurate to say that he has not found success. Clearly he has. So it is up to each person to decide whether or not any products of that success, including his writings, matches their own definition for 'great'.

rramadass 2mo ago

This is the problem with the modern "everything superlative" verbiage. The Press, Social Media, The Public all are to blame for encouraging this. Everything is hyped up and hence the words lose their true meaning. You are somewhat smart in one specific domain; you are a "Genius". You are successful in something; you are the "Greatest". You fail in something; you are a "Loser". You make one single mistake; you are "Dumb". It is almost as if we have forgotten how we got here viz. lots of trial-and-error, sheer persistence, extreme specialization, building theories, sharing knowledge, building teams, focusing on goals, good dose of luck, etc.