#17 in the ranking · ideas · 2004
Hackers & Painters
Hackers & Painters, by Paul Graham, published in 2004, is cited by 80 people in conversations on Hacker News, Stack Exchange and TabNews. It shows up in 17 of the 20 years, from 2007 to 2025, with the most mentions in 2008. People who cite it also cite Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs, Gödel, Escher, Bach and Introduction to Algorithms.
Year by year
Peak: 15 mentions in 2008
Mentions per year: 2007: 5; 2008: 15; 2009: 6; 2010: 11; 2011: 9; 2012: 4; 2013: 3; 2014: 6; 2015: 3; 2016: 4; 2017: 6; 2018: 5; 2019: 5; 2020: 0; 2021: 2; 2022: 7; 2023: 0; 2024: 1; 2025: 1; 2026: 0.
Where it’s cited
What people write
From a text search; it doesn’t yet tell recommending apart from just mentioning.
I'm not much of a butt-licker, but Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age from PG is a classic.
Hacker News · 2011 · in “What is the single most influential book every programmer should read?” · see comment ↗
An essay of the same name is in his book 'Hackers and Painters', which I recommend.
Hacker News · 2019 · see comment ↗
Paul Graham writes about this in his excellent book 'Hackers & Painters' ([link]
Hacker News · 2015 · see comment ↗
"Hackers & Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age" - Paul Graham
TabNews · 2025 · in “Recomendações de livros curtos e não necessariamente técnicos” · see comment ↗