Great Hackers

So a friend pointed me to this talk online. The text can be found here: Great Hackers. Paul Graham hits the proverbial nail on the head with regard to his description of hackers/coders/software engineers.

I’ve read that Java has just overtaken Cobol as the most popular language. As a standard, you couldn’t wish for more. But as a medium of expression, you could do a lot better. Of all the great programmers I can think of, I know of only one who would voluntarily program in Java. And of all the great programmers I can think of who don’t work for Sun, on Java, I know of zero.

So true.

Good programmers know that the language is a tool. Like a wood-craftsmen, choosing the right tool for the right job makes a huge difference in the approach, the progress and the outcome to crafting the solution to the problem.

Go read and/or listen to the whole thing. Good stuff.