Hackers and Painters

Notes

Essay of May 2003, derived from a guest lecture at Harvard that incorporated an earlier talk at Northeastern; later the title essay of Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age (O'Reilly, 2004). This PDF is a headless-browser print of the essay at paulgraham.com, made 4 October 2026; 12 pp. The Japanese edition, ハッカーと画家 コンピュータ時代の創造者たち, translated under the supervision of Shiro Kawai (川合史朗), was published by Ohmsha in January 2005 and is not free (the publisher offers no preview). Kawai's own authorised web translation of this essay (16 May 2003, redistributable with notice) is attached as a second PDF: https://auzflodykqpwhwkadtpq.supabase.co/storage/v1/object/public/library-files/hackers-and-painters/ja-kawai.pdf (from https://practical-scheme.net/trans/hp-j.html). Graham, who went to art school after a computer-science PhD, argues that hackers and painters are both makers, closer to composers, architects and writers than to scientists. "Computer science" is a grab bag of mathematicians, systems researchers and hackers who share a building; hacking, like painting, is learned by doing and by studying good work, proceeds by sketching rather than by premeditated design (so programming languages should be as malleable as pencil and paper, and premature optimisation and static typing get in the way), relies on relentless revision, and on empathy for the user, as a painter needs empathy for the viewer. Because hacking is hard to judge in advance, hackers, like painters, need day jobs that leave them free to do their real work; good makers also learn by collaborating in the manner of a studio, each owning a piece, and by copying the work of masters. He closes with the claim that what the computer age needs most is for its makers to be understood as makers.