Senthadev - Notes

I was watching the following video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=agw-wlHGi0E, where Paul Graham was one of the panel member. His talks and writings carries meaningful messages. I really like Paul Graham’s thinking and ideas, so I have noted it down below. Its an old video, according to youtube description it was made on 2001-05-10. The way he sees the future is fantastic.

Computer doesn’t care about the languages, it only need the instructions to execute. Its us who needs languages.

Different between best languages and other languages are that best languages are created to be used by them to solve their own problems. Other languages are created to be used by others. Simply designed for marketing. Hacker’s don’t like to be told what to do. They like to mess around and figure things out. Best languages are the one which helps to write throw-away programs. Because programs are born in throw-away programs. (This is absolutely true when I used Python and later Go.)

Clients are on loose so focus on server based software. How true his predictions are. Since its server, you can use any languages to program. Choose a language which helps to write changeable software. When doing an update, you must know where it might break when things goes bad. Knowing where it will break is very important. Using closure to keep states.

Focus on profilers since it helps you to speed up your programs.

An interesting point. Rather then picking a language which was designed by 5 people comity, pick a language from a pool of 5 different languages where created by 5 different people. Since each one of them will take very high risk and break boundaries to create it and use it to solve their problems.

(Rest of the speakers are also superb. )