[UFO Chicago] Paul Graham essays

[Larry Garfield]

I've found that some of his essays are quite good, while others are incredibly 
sophomoric.  Anything involving LISP falls into the latter category.  

Now, I don't have anything against LISP per se, having only used it a tiny 
bit, but his believe that it's inherently better because you're working with 
data structures directly is ridiculous.  If I'm working in Java, PHP, C++, 
Perl, or whatnot, it's because I don't want to be dealing with data 
structures directly.  That's the point!

His best essay, and the first one I read, is, I believe, this one:

http://www.paulgraham.com/nerds.html

For good tech books, my recent acquisitions have been SitePoint books on web 
design.  I don't know if that's up your alley, but "The CSS Anthology"[1] is 
a good quick read that manages to be both a cook book and tutorial at the 
same time, plus give just enough theory to make the rest of the theory make a 
lot more sense.  

"DHTML Utopia"[2] is also a good introduction to modern, real Javascript, 
which has (finally!) gotten to the point where one can do non-stupid 
mass-market things with it. :-)  It doesn't do enough JS theory, I feel, 
given that Javascript is very weird to anyone used to C/C++/Java or even 
PHP/Python/Perl (it's kinda LISP-ish, just to confuse people), but it's still 
a useful book if you're into that sort of thing.  

If the web isn't your thing, then ignore both of these. :-)  There are 4 free 
sample chapters for each, though, so it's easy to get a feel for them.

[1] http://www.sitepoint.com/books/cssant1/
[2] http://www.sitepoint.com/books/dhtml1/

On Tuesday 30 August 2005 04:45 pm, Brian Sobolak wrote:
> If you haven't read any Paul Graham essays, I'd highly recommend doing so.
>  He has a great book on O'Reilly titled "Hackers And Painters", but you
> can read most of the essays online too.
>
> http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html
>
> He posted a newish one recently about something that's come up a lot at
> the meetings, job security.  Neil, you might enjoy reading this:
>
> http://www.paulgraham.com/ladder.html
>
> Anyone else have any good tech books (or any decent books) to recommend?
> I'm craving new material.
>
> brian
>
> --
> Brian Sobolak
> http://www.planetshwoop.com/
>
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-- 
Larry Garfield			AIM: LOLG42
larry at garfieldtech.com		ICQ: 6817012

"If nature has made any one thing less susceptible than all others of 
exclusive property, it is the action of the thinking power called an idea, 
which an individual may exclusively possess as long as he keeps it to 
himself; but the moment it is divulged, it forces itself into the possession 
of every one, and the receiver cannot dispossess himself of it."  -- Thomas 
Jefferson