Hackers and Painters
Here’s an article published by Paul Graham in 2003 that’s worth reading.
“I’ve never liked the term “computer science.” The main reason I don’t like it is that there’s no such thing. Computer science is a grab bag of tenuously related areas thrown together by an accident of history, like Yugoslavia. At one end you have people who are really mathematicians, but call what they’re doing computer science so they can get DARPA grants. In the middle you have people working on something like the natural history of computers– studying the behaviour of algorithms for routing data through networks, for example. And then at the other extreme you have the hackers, who are trying to write interesting software, and for whom computers are just a medium of expression, as concrete is for architects or paint for painters. It’s as if mathematicians, physicists, and architects all had to be in the same department.”
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Wow. Just wow. Here I am, working on the sheets for my seminar in theoretical computer science, feeling completely overwhelmed because I’m done with the pretty graphs and now I have to do the hieroglyphic formulas and proofs and stuff. And I’m not getting it and I don’t care about it, yet there’s still so much left to do in so little time.
So I think about dropping out, again, and doing something similar that is just easier, or going into a different direction altogether, like design. Feeling some uncertainty whether I should really let 5 years of my life go to waste like this to start something else which I might not finish either.
Routinely, I check my news and you mention a five year old article that could have been written by my future self. Fuck, if only I had read this five years ago, it might have given me the kind of confirmation I seem to need, as other people try to keep me from quitting. Which is the right thing to do, since just quitting is really not that wise. But I am not alone, it appears. Feels good. Thank you very much for linking that article despite its age, at exactly the right time.
Dennis Kehrig
August 19, 2008 at 2:31 am
Hi Dennis, I’m glad you read the article. Paul Graham is a very motivational and inspiring person. Good luck with your seminar!
Federico
August 19, 2008 at 2:05 pm