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Revenge of the Nerds

paulgraham.com · 6,098 words · saved by 1 readers

May 2002 "We were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp." - Guy Steele, co-author of the Java spec In the software business there is an ongoing struggle between the pointy-headed academics, and another equally formidable force, the pointy-haired bosses. Everyone knows who the pointy-haired boss is, right? I think most people in the technology world not only recognize this cartoon character, but know the actual person in their company that he is modelled upon. The pointy-haired boss miraculously combines two qualities that are common by themselves, but rarely seen together: (a) he knows nothing whatsoever about technology, and (b) he has very strong opinions about it. Suppose, for example, you need to write a piece of software. The pointy-haired boss has no idea how this software has to work, and can't tell one programming language from another, and yet he knows what language you should write it in. Exactly. He thinks you should write

Revenge of the Nerds --> Want to start a startup? Get funded by Y Combinator . May 2002 "We were after the C++ programmers. We managed to drag a lot of them about halfway to Lisp." - Guy Steele, co-author of the Java spec (This is an expanded version of the keynote lecture at the International ICAD User's Group conference in May 2002. It explains how a language developed in 1958 manages to be the most powerful available even today, what power is and when you need it, and why pointy-haired bosses (ideally, your competitors' pointy-haired bosses) deliberately ignore this issue.) Note: In this ta

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