Graham's Fancy

mrG — Thu, 29 Jul 2004 07:41:25 -0400

Paul Graham has published the whole of his delightful flight of fancy on how the IT world should work, a whirlwind tour through a never-never la-la land said to team over with Great Hackers:

What do hackers want? Like all craftsmen, hackers like good tools. In fact, that's an understatement. Good hackers find it unbearable to use bad tools. They'll simply refuse to work on projects with the wrong infrastructure.

Yeah, right. So why do all the offers start their pitch by listing off the bad choices that must compose the solution? The simple truth here is everybody likes good tools; pipefitters, cellists, ice cream truck drivers ... but the reality is most everyone must make do with what they've got; the reality is those who front the money decide where it gets spent whether that's clay bricks or Cray-I's.

IMHO the truly great hackers, in any domain, make creative use of what they get, like Picasso's Baboon, or the Mexican artists who earn their keep turning trash tin cans into beautiful burnished mirrors and candle holders.

That's hacking.

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Graham's Fancy