Essayist and entrepreneur
Paul Graham is an English-American computer scientist, essayist, and co-founder of Y Combinator, the startup accelerator behind companies such as Airbnb, Stripe, and Dropbox. He is the author of Hackers & Painters and his influential online essays on startups, technology, and ambition have shaped a generation of founders.
by Paul Graham
Graham argues that hackers and painters share more in common than hackers and engineers. Great software, like great art, comes from taste, empathy, and the courage to challenge conventional thinking.
The books Paul Graham references, cites, and recommends most frequently.
by Frederick Brooks
Brooks argues that adding more programmers to a late project makes it later - a principle now known as Brooks' Law. The deeper insight: software complexity grows faster than headcount, making communication the real bottleneck.
Who Paul draws from, and who draws from Paul — aggregated across every book in this collection. Counts show the number of citation links, not the depth of each one.