Quote: On Artificial Environments
March 30th, 2008
In an artificial world, only extremists live naturally.http://www.paulgraham.com/boss.html
Rich Blogs ... Again
begin; rich.blog; rescue; retry; end
| You Are Animal |
 You thrive on uncontrolled energy, and you're downright scary. But you sure can beat a good drum. "Kill! Kill!" |
April 4th, 2008 at 01:43 PM
I don't particularly like Paul Graham. Sometimes I wonder if its purely because he has been exalted as a god by people in the info-tech community. Or maybe it is because he believes it. I dunno. However, this article, while fascinating and agreeable to me in many ways, is missing something. That thing is called reality. It certainly makes sense that a self-employed programmer at a startup is going to have far more creative latitude than a code monkey at JP Morgan Chase. But code monkey has a family, code monkey has debts, and bills that need a stable income to maintain. Code monkey is concerned with the most basic instinct of the natural world - survival. So on top of code monkey working corporate, he has to deal with Mr. Graham telling him that he is in bondage and that the truth lies in a startup. Maybe code monkey believes that working in massive groups is not at odds with what nature intended. Maybe code monkey believes that its unnatural for one monkey to work all his life for a lot of bananas. Maybe and just maybe, code monkey sees more importance in the relationships he has with other monkeys then the pursuit to have the most bananas. Maybe code monkey thinks Paul Graham needs a giant banana shoved up his ass!