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84 insights saved from paulgraham.com's articles by @business, @psychology and @technology

What I Worked On

21 insights · See all
  1. @business· Startups
    Steve Russell translated McCarthy’s self-interpreting Lisp into IBM 704 machine language, turning it into an ordinary programming language.
  2. @business· Startups
    Attention is zero-sum. Choosing an adequate project blocks your attention from reaching a better one.

How to Do Great Work

21 insights · See all
  1. @psychology· Personal Effectiveness
    The crucial insight in many major ideas lies in the question, not the eventual answer.
  2. @psychology· Personal Effectiveness
    Copy openly and consciously, or imitation turns you into a vehicle for someone else’s assumptions.

Why Nerds are Unpopular

17 insights · See all
  1. @psychology· Social Dynamics
    Teenage unhappiness largely comes from adults abandoning economically unnecessary adolescents in confined schools with nothing real to do, not hormones.
  2. @psychology· Social Dynamics
    If teenage misery is physiological, it should be universal. Are Mongol nomads all nihilists?

Hackers and Painters

17 insights · See all
  1. @technology· Software
    The original 1985 Macintosh succeeded because users never had to understand or prepare for the software.
  2. @technology· Software
    Premature design is as dangerous as premature optimization. Deciding too early what a program should do limits later discovery.

Founder Mode

8 insights · See all
  1. @business· Startups
    For founder-led companies, “hire good people and give them autonomy” can be seriously damaging advice.
  2. @business· Startups
    Delegating entirely through direct reports allows professional fakers and politically skilled executives to control a company and drive it into decline.
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