While various people are asserting that Paul Graham’s paper Great Hackers is wrong-minded, I have to say that the talk at OSCon, from which it was derived, was one of the better things going at OSCon. Granted, a large part of his audience was the Great Hackers of whom he spoke. I don’t actually have time right now either to read the entire thing, or to figure out why so many people think that he’s wrong. But those of you who were not at his talk might be interested in reading at least the introduction to what he’s saying. I think he makes some brilliant points. And I particularly like his introduction:

I didn’t mean to make the book controversial. I was trying to make it efficient. I didn’t want to waste people’s time telling them things they already knew. It’s more efficient just to give them the diffs. But I suppose that’s bound to yield an alarming book.

(See Feedster for some of the remarks being made on this topic.)