American essayist, entrepreneur and renowned programmer Paul Graham in 2008 was included in the list of 25 most influential people in the web industry according to BusinessWeek magazine. His ideas today help thousands of young people.
A few facts from the biography
Paul Graham was born in 1964 in England. Soon after, his father, a physicist, went with his family to the United States, as he was offered a job at an enterprise designing nuclear reactors.
Back in 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 entered Cornell University and after graduation received a bachelor's degree. He was later awarded a master's and doctorate degree in computer science at Harvard. The talented young man did not stop there and decided to continue his studies in science with the goal of creating artificial intelligence. However, he soon realized that he would not succeed in realizing his dream and became interested in painting. In order to succeed in this field, he entered the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence, and also graduated from the Rhode Island School of Design. He moved to a cramped studio in New York, dreaming of a career as an artist, but he was chronically short of money. This prompted the guy to get rid of financial problems once and for all.
Viaweb
In 1995, Paul Graham and Robert Morris created Viaweb. This software, written in Common Lisp, allowed ordinary users to create online stores on their own. 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: Lisp Books
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 devoted to Lisp, a programming language actively promoted by Graham. They are intended for specialists, as well as students who are still only comprehending the intricacies of their profession. At the same time, 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 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 was written in 2004. It is a collection of essays that was published by O'Reilly. They are not interconnected, and they address various issues related to programming: the choice of languages, the correct design of web applications, the problem of protecting the user from spam, the economic issues associated with the implementation of Internet startups, etc.
"Paradox Blob"
Links to Paul Graham on thematic resources and in special literature can be found quite often. In particular, at one time great interest was aroused by the Blub paradox ("Blok Paradox") described by him, which Graham shared with his audience in the essay "Conquering Mediocrity." It addresses issues related to difficulties in promoting more powerful programming languages, primarily Lips. In a nutshell, its essence is as follows: there is a programmer who owns and “thinks in the Blab” (a rather primitive programming language). It expresses the solution to any problem in Blub. Moreover, the additional tools available in a more powerful language have no value for him. And this is not surprising, since he does not know how to apply them! Only when a programmer, due to some external reasons, learns a new language, he will be able to understand all the limitations of the Blab. Thus, the primitiveness of the old “instrument” in itself is not an incentive to learn new things. After all, to understand the limitations of the possibilities of a familiar language, you must already know more powerful.
Through this paradox, Paul Graham explains why programmers usually do not seek to learn more effective tools than those that they already own.
The Graham Pyramid
This name was given to the hierarchy of arguments in the dispute, which Paul cited in the essay “How to object”. Those who are familiar with it consider the Pyramid to be extremely useful for everyone who needs to defend their point of view in a dispute.
All possible arguments during the discussion are presented in the form of a seven-level hierarchy. Paul Graham, whose “White Combinator” (accelerator) is known all over the world, notes that one should strive upwards to the “top of the pyramid”, and then it will be possible to reduce the tension of the dispute. In practice, hierarchies are often used by bloggers who evaluate comments with their help and choose those that make sense to answer.
Paul Graham: The Combinator
In 2005, the famous essayist made a speech at the Harvard Computer Society. Some time later, it was published as a rather lengthy essay under the heading "How to start a startup." A meeting with colleagues, most of whom were very young boys and girls, prompted Graham to create Y Combinator with like-minded Jessica Livingston, Trevor Blackwell and Robert Morris. 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 field, with the necessary sums of money at the very beginning of their journey.
One of the successful projects of Y Combinator was the creation of the Hacker News website. In addition, Dropbox, Airbnb's rental service, Stripe, and others are its successful “graduates.” The accelerator has already released over 7 hundred startups. At the same time, the total valuation of all companies exceeds $ 30 billion.
"10 rules"
Paul Graham, a film worth watching for anyone who wants to start their own business on the Web, recommends:
- start small;
- look for markets where there are many competitors;
- do programming, not waste time on an MBA;
- Do not try to reach many users at once;
- to dismiss any employee who is not beneficial;
- underestimate yourself;
- hire a minimum number of employees;
- Do not focus on the amount that you can get for a startup;
- work on ideas that few consider successful;
- understand that to achieve success will require at least 3-4 years.
Now you know who Paul Graham is. “White combinator” (a film about this project has yet to be shot) is one of the most successful brainchild of this talented person. His ideas inspire young people, and his advice helps to achieve great success even for those who do not have a large start-up capital.