American essayist, entrepreneur and famousprogrammer Paul Graham in 2008 was included among the 25 most influential people in the web according to BusinessWeek magazine. His ideas today help thousands of young people.
Some facts from the biography
Paul Graham was born in 1964 in England. Shortly thereafter, his father, a physicist, went with his family to the United States, as he was offered a job in an enterprise engaged in the design of nuclear reactors.
While still at school, the boy began to write computer programs aimed at solving practical problems. One of them, for example, was created to simulate the flight path of space rockets.
After completing his studies at school, Graham enteredCornell University and after graduating received a bachelor's degree. Later, he was awarded a master's and PhD degree in computer science at Harvard. The talented young man did not stop there and decided to continue his studies in science in order to create artificial intelligence. However, he soon realized that he would not succeed in realizing his dream and was carried away by painting. In order to succeed in this field, he enrolled at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, and also graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design. He moved to a small studio in New York, dreaming of a career as an artist, but he became chronically short of money. This prompted the guy to think once and for all get rid of problems with finances.
Viaweb
In 1995, Paul Graham and Robert Morris createdViaweb. This software, written in Common Lisp, allowed ordinary users to create their own online stores. In the summer of 1998, Yahoo acquired Viaweb for 455,000 of its shares, which at that time were worth $ 49.6 million. The product became known as the Yahoo Store.
Paul Graham: Books on Lisp
As you know, a talented person is talented in everything. Paul Graham is no exception, as his essays and books confirm.
The most famous of his literary works are On Lisp (1993), ANSI Common Lisp (1995) and Hackers & Painters (2004).
The first 2 books are about Lisp - languageprogramming, an active popularizer of which is Graham. They are intended for professionals as well as students who are still learning the subtleties of their profession. Moreover, in On Lisp, the author concentrates on macros and a number of other specific features of the Lisp language, demonstrating with examples how their use helps to radically change the approach to solving a number of practical problems. As for ANSI Common Lisp, this is a classic Lisp tutorial. It is also written for programmers and includes a detailed explanation of the basic concepts of this language, as well as a full description of the ANSI Common Lisp standard.
Hackers & painters
The third of the famous books by Paul Graham is writtenin 2004 year. It is a collection of essays published by O’Reilly. They are not related to each other, and they address various issues related to programming: the choice of languages, the correct design of web applications, the problem of protecting users from spam, economic issues related to the implementation of Internet start-ups, etc.
“Paradox Blab”
Links to Paul Graham on thematic resources and inspecial literature can be found quite often. In particular, a great interest in his time was caused by the Blub paradox described by him (“The Paradox of Blab”), which Graham shared with his audience in the essay “Winning Mediocrity”. It addresses issues related to difficulties in promoting more powerful programming languages, above all, Lips. In 2 words, its essence is as follows: there is a programmer who owns and “thinks in Blaba” (by some rather primitive programming language). He expresses the solution to any problem in the means of Blub. At the same time, additional funds available in a more powerful language have no value for it. And this is not surprising, since he does not know how to apply them! Only when a programmer learns a new language due to some external reasons will he be able to understand all the limitations of Blab. Thus, the primitiveness of the old “instrument” is not in itself a stimulus for learning the new. After all, to realize the limitations of the possibilities of a familiar language, it is necessary to know more powerful.
Through this paradox, Paul Graham explains why programmers usually do not seek to learn more effective tools than those they already possess.
"Graham's Pyramid"
This name was given the hierarchy of arguments inthe controversy Paul brought up in an essay "How to object." Those who are familiar with it, consider the "Pyramid" extremely useful for everyone who needs to defend their point of view in a dispute.
All possible argumentation during the discussion.presented in the form of a seven-level hierarchy. Paul Graham, whose “White Combinator” (accelerator) is known throughout the world, observes that one should strive upward, towards the “top of the pyramid”, and then the tension of the dispute can be reduced. In practice, the hierarchy is often used by bloggers, who evaluate comments using it and choose those that are worth answering.
Paul Graham: The Combinator
In 2005, the famous essayist entered with a speech inHarvard Computer Society. Some time later, it was published as a rather lengthy essay under the heading "How to start a startup." Meeting with colleagues, most of whom were very young boys and girls, pushed Graham to create, along with like-minded people Jessica Livingston, Trevor Blackwell and Robert Morris of Y Combinator. The aim of the project was to provide start-ups, especially those created by very young people and aimed at developing new technologies in the IT sphere, with the necessary amount of money at the very beginning of their journey.
One of the successful projects of Y Combinator wassite creation Hacker News. In addition, its successful "graduates" are Dropbox, the Airbnb rental service, Stripe, and others. Accelerator has already released more than 7 hundred startups. At the same time, the total valuation of the value of all companies exceeds $ 30 billion.
"10 rules"
Paul Graham, a film about which is worth watching for anyone who wants to start a business on the Web, recommends:
- start small;
- look for markets where there are many competitors;
- do programming and not waste time on an MBA;
- do not seek to reach many users at once;
- dismiss any employee who does not benefit;
- underestimate yourself;
- hire a minimum number of employees;
- do not focus on the amount you can get for a startup;
- work on ideas that few people consider successful;
- understand that success will take at least 3-4 years.
Now you know who Paul Graham is.“The White Combinator” (a film about this project, still to be made) is one of the most successful offspring of this talented person. His ideas inspire young people, and the advice helps to achieve a resounding success, even for those who do not have a large starting capital.
