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Paul Graham

Paul Graham87 posts

Paul Graham is a computer programmer, essayist, and venture capitalist, born in 1964. He is a co-founder of Viaweb, which later became Yahoo Store. His writing includes essays on the programming language Lisp, being a nerd in high school, and the hypothetical programming language Blub. He has published three books, including a collection of essays titled Hackers And Painters. He is one of the creators of the startup incubator Y Combinator and the social news site Hacker News. He has a PhD in Computer Science from Harvard, and studied painting in Italy. He is married to Jessica Livingston.

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1993

On Lisp

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Paul Graham On LispGraham publishes a study of advanced programming techniques using the language, with the theme of bottom-up programming.

Its examples form a library of functions and macros that readers will be able to use in their own Lisp programs.

1991

Consulting and painting

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Graham takes temporary software development jobs, paints, and attends art school.

I was doing this thing where I would consult for a while and then run out of money and be in a panic.

Art school

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Graham enrolls in the Rhode Island School of Design in the summer, and in the fall takes classes at Florence’s Accademia di Belle Arti, a 500-year-old art school founded during the Renaissance.

I never cared about the official rules

1986

Graduates Cornell

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Graham graduates in the Class of ’86 with a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy, and a lot of experience in computer science:

What I learned from trying to study philosophy is that the place to look is in other fields.

On his decision to study computer science:

I took so many CS classes that most CS majors thought I was one.

13 Nov, 1964

Paul Graham born in Weymouth, England

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Paul Graham is born in Weymouth, Dorset. The family moves to the U.S. and he grows up outside Pittsburgh, where his father works as a physicist designing nuclear reactors and his mother takes raises him and his sister. He starts writing computer code in high school, including a program to predict the flight path of model rockets.

If I could go back and give my thirteen year old self some advice, the main thing I’d tell him would be to stick his head up and look around.