Hackers and Painters

I've just finished reading Hackers and Painters by Paul Graham. It's a really excellent read which I highly recommend. Here are some quotes:

Hackers need to understand the theory of computation about as much as painters need to understand paint chemistry.

Hackers start original and get good, and scientists start good, and get original.

Everyone by now knows the danger of premature optimization. I think we should be just as worried about premature design.

When you switch to a new model, you realize how much software development is affected by the way it is released.

Paying attention is more important to reliability than moving slowly.

Steve Jobs once said that the success or failure of a startup depends on the first ten employees. I agree.

Object oriented programming offers a sustainable way to write spaghetti code.