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Paul Graham

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English-American programmer, venture capitalist, and essayist

Person · Open Library

Works
42

Top works

  • The state of a program and its uses
  • Constructional Truth
  • Dreams of Sarah
  • Liquid Truth
  • Life Questing

via Open Library + Wikidata

Listeners · Last.fm

Listeners
698
Total plays
1,876

<a href="https://www.last.fm/music/Paul+Graham">Read more on Last.fm</a>

via Last.fm · Paul Graham

Quotes

  • Architects know that some kinds of design problems are more personal than others. One of the cleanest, most abstract design problems is designing bridges. There your job is largely a matter of spanning a given distance with the least material. The other end of the spectrum is designing chairs. Chair designers have to spend their time thinking about human butts.
  • The best thing software can be is easy, but the way to do this is to get the defaults right, not to limit users' choices.
  • Software has to be designed by hackers who understand design, not designers who know a little about software. If you can't design software as well as implement it, don't start a startup.
  • At every period of history, people have believed things that were just ridiculous, and believed them so strongly that you risked ostracism or even violence by saying otherwise. If our own time were any different, that would be remarkable. As far as I can tell it isn't.
  • If you try to solve a hard problem, the question is not whether you will use a powerful enough language, but whether you will (a) use a powerful language, (b) write a de facto interpreter for one, or (c) yourself become a human compiler for one.
  • As a rule of thumb, the more qualifiers there are before the name of a country, the more corrupt the rulers. A country called The Socialist People's Democratic Republic of X is probably the last place in the world you'd want to live.

via Wikiquote · CC BY-SA

Key facts

Born
( 1964-11-13 ) November 13, 1964 (age 61) , Weymouth, Dorset , England
Citizenship
British American
Education
Cornell University ( BA ), Harvard University ( MS , PhD )
Known for
Viaweb , Y Combinator , Hacker News , Hackers & Painters
Spouse
Jessica Livingston ​ ( married</span>"}]]}'>m. 2008 ) ​
Fields
Computer science
Thesis
The State of a Program and Its Uses (1990)
Website
paulgraham .com

via Wikipedia infobox

Wikidata facts

Instance of
human
Given name
Paul
Family name
Graham
Gender
male
Citizenship
United Kingdom
Place of birth
Weymouth
Employer
Yahoo
Languages spoken
English language
Native language
English language
Notable work
Q2616400
Field of work
venture capital
Official website
paulgraham.com
Image
Paulgraham 240x320.jpg
Work location
Silicon Valley
Show 6 more facts
date of birth
1964-11-13
different from
Paul Graham
Commons category
Paul Graham (programmer)
name in native language
Paul Graham
social media followers
25287
Sources (9)

via Wikidata · CC0

~8 min read

Encyclopedic overview

Paul Graham (/ɡræm/; born November 13, 1964) is an English-American computer scientist, writer, essayist, entrepreneur and investor. His work includes the programming language Arc, the startup Viaweb (later renamed Yahoo! Store), co-founding the startup accelerator and seed capital firm Y Combinator, a number of essays and books, and the media webpage Hacker News.

He is the author of the computer programming books On Lisp, ANSI Common Lisp, and Hackers & Painters. Technology journalist Steven Levy has described Graham as a "hacker philosopher".

Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Paul Graham” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.