Talk:Paul Graham (programmer)

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The content of Blub (programming) was merged into Paul Graham (programmer) on Blub (programming). The former page's history now serves to provide attribution for that content in the latter page, and it must not be deleted as long as the latter page exists. For the discussion at that ___location, see its talk page.

Arc (programming language) was nominated for deletion. The discussion was closed on 19 March 2015 with a consensus to merge. Its contents were merged into Paul Graham (programmer). The original page is now a redirect to this page. For the contribution history and old versions of the redirected article, please see its history; for its talk page, see here.

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Portrayal of Paul Graham is extremely unfavorable

Latest comment: 9 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Almost every link in the "About Paul Graham" is extremely unfavorable. The focus of the article is not NPOV, painting Paul Graham in a one-sided, negative light. I would not expect to see this sort of trash in a published encyclopedia, (nor would I expect to see this in Wikipedia) even on entries of extremely unpopular individuals. Critique links should be moved to a critique links section. (since almost all of the links are of that nature) General links should be less subjective. It's not as if the man is a bad person, and in fact many people who don't like his opinions try to undermine the fact that he has authored some exceptional computer science texts. (OnLisp and ANSI Common Lisp, for example) I think the criticism in "Dabblers and Blowhards" and "Paul Graham is Wrong" provide a reasonable critique of some of his more mediocre writing, but "Paul Graham is a Tedious Windbag" is by a person who fails to be objective, and resorts to petty name-calling of Paul Graham in several of his entries. The blog author does _NOT_ deserve this sort of attention, (this "yani" person uses his blog as essentially a soapbox for his poorly defended arguments) so I'm removing his link if I can. (please _DO NOT_ revert it back) That aside, I do not believe that most blogs are up to wikipedia standard, and shouldn't be linked to anyway because they are constantly changing.

I believe that there are people out there who seek to use the web to ruin the reputations of people more famous than them; Yani's blog is a good example of such behavior.

It would seem we now have the opposite problem. :) 78.147.174.228 (talk) 22:19, 23 May 2010 (UTC)Reply

Why Paul, is that you...? 173.224.162.69 (talk) 23:34, 6 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

Born in Weymouth, England

Latest comment: 18 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

Interesting he was born in Weymouth. I can't find any other source that confirms this. And references known? Any extra information, e.g. did his parents emigrate or were they holidaying in Weymouth at the time.  :-) -- Ralph Corderoy 22:02, 21 June 2007 (UTC)Reply

Of course he was born in Weymouth,m Dorset, UK. I am his father and I well remember the occasion.,^[1]

Recommend a link to article on Dunning-Kruger effect

Latest comment: 10 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

I recommend adding links between the Wikipedia article on the Blub paradox and the article on the Dunning-Kruger effect. The Blub paradox is a special case of, and a good example of Dunning-Krueger.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_(computer_programmer)#Blub 68.35.173.107 (talk) 18:46, 27 August 2015 (UTC) 68.35.173.107 (talk) 19:14, 28 August 2015 (UTC)Reply

Hierarchy diagram name-calling

Latest comment: 9 years ago3 comments2 people in discussion

Not sure of the best place to raise this, as the image is used in a few places around Wikipedia, but this article is probably the most significant one, since it's a biography and we're trying to summarise the man's writing.

File:Graham's Hierarchy of Disagreement-en.svg explains the "name-calling" level with "sounds something like, 'You are an ass hat.'" - this is the only quotation on the diagram, but it's not a phrase Graham used in his original definition. User:Red Slash edited the image to read "you are an idiot" in July for seeming "out of place", User:CFCF changed it back explaining that it was a "long-standing supported version".

Graham's original example uses quotes of "u r a fag!!!!!!!!!!" and "The author is a self-important dilettante." (and points out that the two are not so different). Neither of those really fits the context here. "Ass hat" seems an obscure enough slang term to suggest to the reader that Graham might have used it in the essay, although has the advantage of being a silly nonsense term that can't be perceived as an ad hominem; "idiot" is more neutral in tone, but is harder to distinguish from the ad hominem of "my opponent is not intelligent enough to argue properly".

Which should the image use? Do we even need an example, when we could have a short sentence distinguishing name-calling from ad hominem? --McGeddon (talk) 17:41, 20 October 2015 (UTC)Reply

With no response in a month I've gone ahead and reverted it, as "idiot" seems less of a profanity, making the image and this article more widely reusable. (Reading up on "ass hat" as an insult it may be intended to mean "to have one's head up one's ass", which would make it even more of an ad hominem than "idiot" anyway.)

I tried editing the SVG directly in a text editor to a third option - something like "jerk" might be a better word to use - but the text isn't editable. If anybody wants to make or implement suggestions, feel free. --McGeddon (talk) 15:25, 30 November 2015 (UTC)Reply

I never responded, but I do appreciate your careful reversion, McGeddon. Thank you. Red Slash 20:43, 24 March 2016 (UTC)Reply

Early life

Latest comment: 8 years ago2 comments2 people in discussion

Not much info from before 1995, about younger earlier life, whereas this seems a usual thing to do, and is relevant.88.159.69.48 (talk) 13:11, 11 January 2016 (UTC)Reply

What's stopping you to add it?Amin (Talk) 22:12, 30 November 2016 (UTC)Reply

Essay on Why Nerds are not popular

Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

This is one of his most well known, and most read essays. Why is there nothing on this page about it? We should ad that to his wikipedia page. Prede (talk) 18:42, 22 September 2017 (UTC)Reply

External links modified

Latest comment: 7 years ago1 comment1 person in discussion

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