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{{Infobox person |
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|name=Paul Graham |
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|image=paulgraham_240x320.jpg |
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|caption= |
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|birth_date=1964 |
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|birth_place=[[Weymouth]], [[England]] |
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|occupation= [[programmer]], [[venture capital]]ist, [[author]] |
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}} |
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'''Paul Graham''' (b. [[1964]]) is a [[Lisp (programming language)|Lisp]] [[programmer]], [[venture capital]]ist, and [[essayist]]. He is the [[author]] of ''[[On Lisp]]'' ([[1993]]), ''ANSI Common Lisp'' ([[1995]]), and ''[[Hackers & Painters]]'' ([[2004]]). |
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==Biography== |
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In [[1995]] Graham and [[Robert Tappan Morris|Robert Morris]] founded [[Viaweb]], the first [[Application service provider|ASP]]. Viaweb's software, originally written mostly in [[Common Lisp]], allowed users to make their own [[Internet store]]s. In the summer of [[1998]] Viaweb was sold to [[Yahoo!]] for 455,000 shares of Yahoo! stock, valued at $49.6 million. [http://docs.yahoo.com/docs/pr/release184.html] At [[Yahoo!]] the product became [[Yahoo! Store]]. |
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He has since begun writing essays for his popular website paulgraham.com. They range from "[http://www.paulgraham.com/avg.html Beating the Averages]", which compares Lisp to other [[programming languages]] and introduced the word [[Blub]], to "[http://paulgraham.com/nerds.html Why Nerds are Unpopular]", a discussion of nerd life in high school. A collection of his essays has been published as ''[[Hackers and Painters]]'' (ISBN 0-596-00662-4) by [[O'Reilly Media|O'Reilly]]. |
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In [[2005]], after giving a talk at the [[Harvard Computer Society]] later published as [http://www.paulgraham.com/start.html How to Start a Startup], Graham along with [[Trevor Blackwell]], [[Jessica Livingston]] and Robert Morris started [[Y Combinator]] to provide [[seed funding]] to [[Startup company|startups]], particularly those started by younger, more technically-oriented founders. Y Combinator has now invested in 80 startups, including [[reddit]], [[Justin.tv]], [[loopt]] and [[Xobni]]. |
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Graham has a [[Bachelor of Arts|B.A.]] <ref>"I might not be the best source of advice, because I was a philosophy major in college. "[http://www.paulgraham.com/college.html]</ref> from [[Cornell University|Cornell]]. He earned an [[M.S.]] and a [[Doctor of Philosophy|Ph.D.]] in Applied Sciences, (specializing in [[computer science]]) from [[Harvard]] in 1988 and 1990 respectively [http://post.harvard.edu], and studied painting at [[Rhode Island School of Design]] and the [[Accademia dell'Arte del Disegno|Accademia di Belle Arti]] in [[Florence]]. |
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==Arc programming language== |
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In 2001, Paul Graham [http://www.paulgraham.com/arcll1.html announced] that he was working on a new dialect of [[Lisp (programming language)|Lisp]] named "Arc." Over the years since, he has written several essays describing features or goals of the language, and some internal projects at Y Combinator have been written in Arc, most notably the [http://news.ycombinator.com Hacker News] web forum and news aggregator program. |
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In the essay [http://www.paulgraham.com/popular.html Being Popular] Graham describes a few of his goals for the language. While many of the goals are very general ("Arc should be hackable," "there should be good [[Library (computing)|libraries]]"), he did give some specifics. For instance, he believes that it is important for a language to be terse: |
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<blockquote> It would not be far from the truth to say that a hacker about to write a program decides what language to use, at least subconsciously, based on the total number of characters he'll have to type. If this isn't precisely how hackers think, a language designer would do well to act as if it were. </blockquote> |
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He also stated that it is better for a language to only implement a small number of "axioms," even when that means the language may not have features that large organizations want, such as [[Object-oriented programming|object-orientation]]. In fact, Graham feels that object-orientation is not useful as OO methods and patterns are just "good design," and he sees the language features used to implement OO as partially mistaken.<ref>[http://www.paulgraham.com/noop.html Why Arc Isn't Especially Object-Oriented]</ref><ref>[http://www.paulgraham.com/arcfaq.html Arc FAQ]</ref> |
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A controversy among Lisp programmers is if, and how much, the [[S-expressions]] of the language should be complemented by other forms of [[syntax]]. Graham feels that additional syntax should be used in situations where pure S-expressions would be overly verbose, saying, "I don't think we should be religiously opposed to introducing syntax into Lisp." Graham also feels that efficiency problems should be solved by giving the programmer a good [[Performance analysis|profiler]]. |
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The first publicly released version of Arc was made available on Tuesday, 29 January 2008<ref>[http://paulgraham.com/arc0.html Arc's Out<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref>. The release comes in the form of a .tar archive, containing the [[mzscheme]] source code for Arc. A [http://ycombinator.com/arc/tut.txt tutorial] and a [http://arclanguage.org/forum discussion forum] are also available. The forum is copied from news.ycombinator.com and is written itself in Arc. |
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The initial version has caused some controversy, notably by not supporting any other [[character set]] than [[ASCII]], and shipping with a built-in web application library that bases its layout on [[Table (HTML)|HTML tables]]. This, combined with the [[hype]] surrounding Arc and its generally slow development pace, has gathered some unfavorable comments<ref>[http://reddit.com/r/programming/info/6710p/comments/ Reddit: Arc's Out]</ref>. |
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==Bayesian filtering== |
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In 2002, Graham published an essay entitled "[http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html A Plan for Spam]," in which he advocated using a [[Naive Bayes classifier]] to identify spam. While Graham did not discover [[Bayesian spam filtering]],<ref>{{cite web|url=http://robotics.stanford.edu/users/sahami/papers-dir/spam.pdf| paper|author=M. Sahami, S. Dumais, D. Heckerman, E. Horvitz|title=A Bayesian approach to filtering junk e-mail|publisher=AAAI'98 Workshop on Learning for Text Categorization|date=1998}}</ref> his paper directly lead to the creation of the popular [[bogofilter]] software, which uses the method, and to including Bayesian Filtering in other existing products such as [[SpamAssassin]]. Controversially{{Fact|date=February 2008}}, Paul Graham never credited the original authors for inventing the technique he outlined in his original essay virtually describing his effort as original. In a follow up essay, he added a reference to the original paper but did not directly refer to it or credit it in the essay itself. |
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Since "A Plan for Spam" Bayesian Filtering has come to be regarded as the best method for filtering spam in situations where the filter can be trained, beating older heuristic approaches both in simplicity of the process and quality of classification.<ref>{{cite web |url=http://www.gfi.com/whitepapers/why-bayesian-filtering.pdf |title=Why Bayesian filtering is the most effective anti-spam technology |accessdate=2007-11-09 |author= |date= |work= |publisher=GFI}}</ref> |
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==External links== |
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{{Wikiquote|Paul Graham}} |
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===By Paul Graham=== |
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*[http://www.paulgraham.com/ Paul Graham's website] |
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*[http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html Paul Graham's essays] |
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*[http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail188.html Audio: Great Hackers] |
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*[http://www.itconversations.com/shows/detail657.html Audio: What Business Can Learn From Open Source] |
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*[http://blog.scribestudio.com/articles/2006/07/17/david-graham-railsconf-2006-keynote-address Video: Power of the Marginal: RailsConf 2006 Keynote Address] |
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===Arc-related=== |
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* [http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32766 Latest news from Y Combinator] |
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* [http://arclanguage.org/ Arc website] |
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* [http://www.paulgraham.com/arcfaq.html Arc FAQ] |
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* [http://www.paulgraham.com/hundred.html The Hundred-Year Language], an essay |
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===About Paul Graham=== |
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* [http://blog.federatedmedia.net/archives/2005/08/paul-graham-nai.php "Paul Graham Nails It"] |
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* [http://www.infoworld.com/article/02/08/20/020822opsecrets_1.html Paul Graham provides stunning answer to spam e-mails] |
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* [http://www.techcrunch.com/2006/09/02/an-interview-with-vc-paul-graham-of-ycombinator/ Techcrunch interview] |
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* [http://uk.intruders.tv/Imperial-Entrepreneurs-Paul-Graham-on-YCombinator_a253.html Paul Graham on YCombinator] video |
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===Parodies=== |
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*[http://www.xach.com/lisp/taste-for-the-web.html Taste for the Web] |
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*[http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=60357 Paul Graham Facts] |
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==References== |
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<references/> |
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Graham, Paul}} |
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[[Category:1964 births]] |
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[[Category:Lisp programming language]] |
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[[Category:Businesspeople in information technology]] |
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[[Category:Harvard University alumni]] |
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[[Category:Yahoo!]] |
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Revision as of 21:22, 10 April 2008
Paul Graham | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | 1964 |
| Occupation(s) | programmer, venture capitalist, author |
Paul Graham (b. 1964) is a Lisp programmer, venture capitalist, and essayist. He is the author of On Lisp (1993), ANSI Common Lisp (1995), and Hackers & Painters (2004).
Biography
In 1995 Graham and Robert Morris founded Viaweb, the first ASP. Viaweb's software, originally written mostly in Common Lisp, allowed users to make their own Internet stores. In the summer of 1998 Viaweb was sold to Yahoo! for 455,000 shares of Yahoo! stock, valued at $49.6 million. [2] At Yahoo! the product became Yahoo! Store.
He has since begun writing essays for his popular website paulgraham.com. They range from "Beating the Averages", which compares Lisp to other programming languages and introduced the word Blub, to "Why Nerds are Unpopular", a discussion of nerd life in high school. A collection of his essays has been published as Hackers and Painters (ISBN 0-596-00662-4) by O'Reilly.
In 2005, after giving a talk at the Harvard Computer Society later published as How to Start a Startup, Graham along with Trevor Blackwell, Jessica Livingston and Robert Morris started Y Combinator to provide seed funding to startups, particularly those started by younger, more technically-oriented founders. Y Combinator has now invested in 80 startups, including reddit, Justin.tv, loopt and Xobni.
Graham has a B.A. [1] from Cornell. He earned an M.S. and a Ph.D. in Applied Sciences, (specializing in computer science) from Harvard in 1988 and 1990 respectively [3], and studied painting at Rhode Island School of Design and the Accademia di Belle Arti in Florence.
Arc programming language
In 2001, Paul Graham announced that he was working on a new dialect of Lisp named "Arc." Over the years since, he has written several essays describing features or goals of the language, and some internal projects at Y Combinator have been written in Arc, most notably the Hacker News web forum and news aggregator program.
In the essay Being Popular Graham describes a few of his goals for the language. While many of the goals are very general ("Arc should be hackable," "there should be good libraries"), he did give some specifics. For instance, he believes that it is important for a language to be terse:
It would not be far from the truth to say that a hacker about to write a program decides what language to use, at least subconsciously, based on the total number of characters he'll have to type. If this isn't precisely how hackers think, a language designer would do well to act as if it were.
He also stated that it is better for a language to only implement a small number of "axioms," even when that means the language may not have features that large organizations want, such as object-orientation. In fact, Graham feels that object-orientation is not useful as OO methods and patterns are just "good design," and he sees the language features used to implement OO as partially mistaken.[2][3]
A controversy among Lisp programmers is if, and how much, the S-expressions of the language should be complemented by other forms of syntax. Graham feels that additional syntax should be used in situations where pure S-expressions would be overly verbose, saying, "I don't think we should be religiously opposed to introducing syntax into Lisp." Graham also feels that efficiency problems should be solved by giving the programmer a good profiler.
The first publicly released version of Arc was made available on Tuesday, 29 January 2008[4]. The release comes in the form of a .tar archive, containing the mzscheme source code for Arc. A tutorial and a discussion forum are also available. The forum is copied from news.ycombinator.com and is written itself in Arc.
The initial version has caused some controversy, notably by not supporting any other character set than ASCII, and shipping with a built-in web application library that bases its layout on HTML tables. This, combined with the hype surrounding Arc and its generally slow development pace, has gathered some unfavorable comments[5].
Bayesian filtering
In 2002, Graham published an essay entitled "A Plan for Spam," in which he advocated using a Naive Bayes classifier to identify spam. While Graham did not discover Bayesian spam filtering,[6] his paper directly lead to the creation of the popular bogofilter software, which uses the method, and to including Bayesian Filtering in other existing products such as SpamAssassin. Controversially[citation needed], Paul Graham never credited the original authors for inventing the technique he outlined in his original essay virtually describing his effort as original. In a follow up essay, he added a reference to the original paper but did not directly refer to it or credit it in the essay itself.
Since "A Plan for Spam" Bayesian Filtering has come to be regarded as the best method for filtering spam in situations where the filter can be trained, beating older heuristic approaches both in simplicity of the process and quality of classification.[7]
External links
By Paul Graham
- Paul Graham's website
- Paul Graham's essays
- Audio: Great Hackers
- Audio: What Business Can Learn From Open Source
- Video: Power of the Marginal: RailsConf 2006 Keynote Address
About Paul Graham
- "Paul Graham Nails It"
- Paul Graham provides stunning answer to spam e-mails
- Techcrunch interview
- Paul Graham on YCombinator video
Parodies
References
- ^ "I might not be the best source of advice, because I was a philosophy major in college. "[1]
- ^ Why Arc Isn't Especially Object-Oriented
- ^ Arc FAQ
- ^ Arc's Out
- ^ Reddit: Arc's Out
- ^ M. Sahami, S. Dumais, D. Heckerman, E. Horvitz (1998). "A Bayesian approach to filtering junk e-mail" (PDF). AAAI'98 Workshop on Learning for Text Categorization.
{{cite web}}: Text "paper" ignored (help)CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - ^ "Why Bayesian filtering is the most effective anti-spam technology" (PDF). GFI. Retrieved 2007-11-09.