11 Apr, 2006
Hackers and Painters: Big Ideas from the Computer Age
posted by: bill anastas in: books
I liked this book mostly because I am obsessed with the dot-com-boom era (thanks to DOT) and the author is the creator of viaweb, a startup that created the first server based software for internet users to create their own online shopping carts. They were bought out by Yahoo (sorry, couldn’t do it) and it is still the most widely used shopping cart on the web. Some of the ideas covered in this book prompted me to move a large amount of my client-based activity online. I have since gotten rid of outlook and now direct all mail for my 17 web domains to my gmail account. The early parts of this book are also inspiring to those that ever wanted to attempt their own startup. This book is an excellent read up until the end where it seems to turn more into his thesis (he has a phD in Computer Science) about the 100 year programming language. Overall I found it very enjoyable though and even liked the most of the uber-geek parts.
