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July 2006
When I was in high school I spent a lot of time imitating bad
writers. What we studied in English classes was mostly fiction,
so I assumed that was the highest form of writing. Mistake number
one. The stories that seemed to be most admired were ones in which
people suffered in complicated ways. Anything f... |
May 2001
(These are some notes I made
for a panel discussion on programming language design
at MIT on May 10, 2001.)1. Programming Languages Are for People.Programming languages
are how people talk to computers. The computer would be just as
happy speaking any language that was unambiguous. The reason we
have high l... |
May 2007People who worry about the increasing gap between rich and poor
generally look back on the mid twentieth century as a golden age.
In those days we had a large number of high-paying union manufacturing
jobs that boosted the median income. I wouldn't quite call the
high-paying union job a myth, but I think peopl... |
January 2016Life is short, as everyone knows. When I was a kid I used to wonder
about this. Is life actually short, or are we really complaining
about its finiteness? Would we be just as likely to feel life was
short if we lived 10 times as long?Since there didn't seem any way to answer this question, I stopped
wonder... |
November 2021(This essay is derived from a talk at the Cambridge Union.)When I was a kid, I'd have said there wasn't. My father told me so.
Some people like some things, and other people like other things,
and who's to say who's right?It seemed so obvious that there was no such thing as good taste
that it was only thro... |
May 2001(This article was written as a kind of business plan for a
new language.
So it is missing (because it takes for granted) the most important
feature of a good programming language: very powerful abstractions.)A friend of mine once told an eminent operating systems
expert that he wanted to design a really good
pr... |
Want to start a startup? Get funded by
Y Combinator.
November 2009I don't think Apple realizes how badly the App Store approval process
is broken. Or rather, I don't think they realize how much it matters
that it's broken.The way Apple runs the App Store has harmed their reputation with
programmers more than an... |
May 2006(This essay is derived from a keynote at Xtech.)Could you reproduce Silicon Valley elsewhere, or is there something
unique about it?It wouldn't be surprising if it were hard to reproduce in other
countries, because you couldn't reproduce it in most of the US
either. What does it take to make a silicon valley e... |
December 2019There are two distinct ways to be politically moderate: on purpose
and by accident. Intentional moderates are trimmers, deliberately
choosing a position mid-way between the extremes of right and left.
Accidental moderates end up in the middle, on average, because they
make up their own minds about each que... |
Want to start a startup? Get funded by
Y Combinator.
October 2010After barely changing at all for decades, the startup funding
business is now in what could, at least by comparison, be called
turmoil. At Y Combinator we've seen dramatic changes in the funding
environment for startups. Fortunately one of them i... |
February 2007A few days ago I finally figured out something I've wondered about
for 25 years: the relationship between wisdom and intelligence.
Anyone can see they're not the same by the number of people who are
smart, but not very wise. And yet intelligence and wisdom do seem
related. How?What is wisdom? I'd say it... |
February 2021Before college the two main things I worked on, outside of school,
were writing and programming. I didn't write essays. I wrote what
beginning writers were supposed to write then, and probably still
are: short stories. My stories were awful. They had hardly any plot,
just characters with strong feelings, w... |
January 2017People who are powerful but uncharismatic will tend to be disliked.
Their power makes them a target for criticism that they don't have
the charisma to disarm. That was Hillary Clinton's problem. It also
tends to be a problem for any CEO who is more of a builder than a
schmoozer. And yet the builder-type CEO... |
July 2010What hard liquor, cigarettes, heroin, and crack have in common is
that they're all more concentrated forms of less addictive predecessors.
Most if not all the things we describe as addictive are. And the
scary thing is, the process that created them is accelerating.We wouldn't want to stop it. It's the same ... |
November 2022Since I was about 9 I've been puzzled by the apparent contradiction
between being made of matter that behaves in a predictable way, and
the feeling that I could choose to do whatever I wanted. At the
time I had a self-interested motive for exploring the question. At
that age (like most succeeding ages) I w... |
October 2004
As E. B. White said, "good writing is rewriting." I didn't
realize this when I was in school. In writing, as in math and
science, they only show you the finished product.
You don't see all the false starts. This gives students a
misleading view of how things get made.Part of the reason it happens is th... |
May 2004When people care enough about something to do it well, those who
do it best tend to be far better than everyone else. There's a
huge gap between Leonardo and second-rate contemporaries like
Borgognone. You see the same gap between Raymond Chandler and the
average writer of detective novels. A top-ranked prof... |
Want to start a startup? Get funded by
Y Combinator.
July 2004(This essay is derived from a talk at Oscon 2004.)
A few months ago I finished a new
book,
and in reviews I keep
noticing words like "provocative'' and "controversial.'' To say
nothing of "idiotic.''I didn't mean to make the book controversial. I w... |
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