Doug Kaye: The second chapter of the book, which is in fact entitled Hackers and Painters, draws parallels between hacking and painting. In what ways do you think to program is more like painting than it is like some of our more common metaphors such as engineering?

Paul Graham: One big difference between painting and engineering is engineers.in buildings for example there is this distinction between architects and engineers. Architects decide what the building is going to look like basically and then they say to an engineer, "Can I do this? And then how?" And the engineer figures out how. So architects figure out "what," engineers figure out "how." Well painters do both. Painters decide what to paint and then have to paint it. And hackers in the best case also do both. They're not merely engineers who just figure out "how." The great hackers decide "what" and then figure out "how." And in fact the two can influence one another in a cycle in the best case. In the best case, you figure out "what" by trying various "hows."

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