All Annotations of Hackers and Painters[Preview]

saved by4 people, first byBernardo Schepop on 2006-07-28, last bySam Kitonyi on 2008-01-31

• What hackers and painters have in common is that they're
  both makers. Along with composers, architects, and writers,
  what hackers and painters are trying to do is make good things.
• Like painting, most software is intended for
  a human audience. And so hackers, like painters, must have
  empathy to do really great work. You have to be able to see
  things from the user's point of view.
• It turns out that looking at things from
  other people's point of view is practically the secret of
  success.
• One way to tell how good people are at empathy is to watch
  them explain a technical question to someone without a technical
  background.
• Source code, too, should explain itself. If I could get people to
  remember just one quote about programming, it would be the
  one at the beginning of Structure and Interpretation of Computer
  Programs.
  

  
  Programs should be written for people to read, and
  only incidentally for machines to execute.