The author examines issues such as the rightness of web-based applications, the programming language renaissance, spam filtering, the Open Source Movement, Internet startups and more. He also tells important stories about the kinds of people behind technical innovations, revealing their character and their craft.

"The computer world is like an intellectual Wild West, in which you can shoot anyone you wish with your ideas, if you're willing to risk the consequences. " --from Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age, by Paul Graham We are living in the computer age, in a world increasingly designed and engineered by computer programmers and software designers, by people who call themselves hackers. Who are these people, what motivates them, and why should you care? Consider these facts: Everything around us is turning into computers. Your typewriter is gone, replaced by a computer. Your phone has turned into a computer. So has your camera. Soon your TV will. Your car was not only designed on computers, but has more processing power in it than a room-sized mainframe did in 1970. Letters, encyclopedias, newspapers, and even your local store are being replaced by the Internet. Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age, by Paul Graham, explains this world and the motivations of the people who occupy it. In clear, thoughtful prose that draws on illuminating historical examples, Graham takes readers on an unflinching exploration into what he calls "an intellectual Wild West." The ideas discussed in this book will have a powerful and lasting impact on how we think, how we work, how we develop technology, and how we live. Topics include the importance of beauty in software design, how to make wealth, heresy and free speech, the programming language renaissance, the open-source movement, digital design, internet startups, and more.

Everything around us is turning into computers. Typewriters, phones, cars, letters, encyclopedias, newspapers, and even your local store are being replaced by the Internet. Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age, by Paul Graham, explains this world and the motivations of the people who occupy it. In clear, thoughtful prose that draws on illuminating historical examples, Graham takes readers on an unflinching exploration into what he calls "an intellectual Wild West."

* Our summary is short, simple and pragmatic. It allows you to have the essential ideas of a big book in less than 30 minutes. By reading this summary, you will discover how hacking is a refined and sophisticated discipline, and how it relates to painting. You will also discover : that very often, under the glasses of the hacker and the pimply-faced nerd, badly bundled and mistreated, hides a magnificent intelligence and a rare sensitivity; the common points between pictorial composition and the art of creating code; the rudiments of the discreet and subtle art of computer programming; the keys to innovation. Behind many of the great fortunes that marked their time and continue to do so today, hackers are often hiding, in the good sense of the word, people from the world of programming, of code: Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Ellison or Mark Zuckerberg. Computing is a formidable springboard for those who know how to "halt and catch fire", as IBM puts it. The code is a means of expression and determines, just like a painter, what the coder wants to reveal to the world and about himself. It is a musical and pictorial score in which its creators challenge the individual through a beautiful language composed of zeros and ones. *Buy now the summary of this book for the modest price of a cup of coffee!

Now available in paperback—with a new preface and interview with Jessica Livingston about Y Combinator! Founders at Work: Stories of Startups' Early Days is a collection of interviews with founders of famous technology companies about what happened in the very earliest days. These people are celebrities now. What was it like when they were just a couple friends with an idea? Founders like Steve Wozniak (Apple), Caterina Fake (Flickr), Mitch Kapor (Lotus), Max Levchin (PayPal), and Sabeer Bhatia (Hotmail) tell you in their own words about their surprising and often very funny discoveries as they learned how to build a company. Where did they get the ideas that made them rich? How did they convince investors to back them? What went wrong, and how did they recover? Nearly all technical people have thought of one day starting or working for a startup. For them, this book is the closest you can come to being a fly on the wall at a successful startup, to learn how it's done. But ultimately these interviews are required reading for anyone who wants to understand business, because startups are business reduced to its essence. The reason their founders become rich is that startups do what businesses do—create value—more intensively than almost any other part of the economy. How? What are the secrets that make successful startups so insanely productive? Read this book, and let the founders themselves tell you.

The acclaimed bestseller that's teaching the world about the power of mass collaboration. Translated into more than twenty languages and named one of the best business books of the year by reviewers around the world, Wikinomics has become essential reading for business people everywhere. It explains how mass collaboration is happening not just at Web sites like Wikipedia and YouTube, but at traditional companies that have embraced technology to breathe new life into their enterprises. This national bestseller reveals the nuances that drive wikinomics, and share fascinating stories of how masses of people (both paid and volunteer) are now creating TV news stories, sequencing the human gnome, remixing their favorite music, designing software, finding cures for diseases, editing school texts, inventing new cosmetics, and even building motorcycles.

The backlash against outsourcing American jobs to countries like India had transformed into an anti-immigrant and anti-Indian atmosphere lately. While looking at outsourcing and high-tech visa programs from a completely different angle --and giving an enjoyable account of Indian programmers -- this book answers, in an extremely balanced way, the following complicated questions that have been raised by many American programmers, talkshow hosts, news anchors like Lou Dobbs of CNN, and even by some politicians. If outsourcing is inevitable, whats next for Americans? Did America really benefit from immigrant programmers? Was there never a need to bring immigrant programmers to the U.S.? Are Indian immigrant programmers nothing but corporate lapdogs? Are Indian programmers dumb as rocks and incapable of thinking outside of the box? Did Indian immigrant programmers support the September 11th attacks? Did Americans invent everything that belongs to the computer industry? Is the Indian education system far below world standards? Is there an organized Indian mafia in American universities that hires only Indian cronies?