Paul Graham Quotes

The reason AI coding works so well is that the source code of the median app was already slop before LLMs.

If the far left are upset that having advanced math classes in public schools produces unequal outcomes, wait till they see how unequal the outcomes are without such classes.

Now that I've been through being a kid, growing up, and then having kids, it's clear that the main thing that differentiates people is simply whether they make an effort. Whether they're content to drift along with the current, or whether they try to swim.

Your moral principles and your economic interests won't always be aligned. What you do when they're not is a test of character.

Organizations that can't measure performance end up measuring performativeness instead.

In practice, good intentions rarely work as well as good incentives.

When you're deciding what to study in college, don't try to predict what will be valuable in the future, because that's so hard that you'll probably get it wrong. Instead focus on what you personally find most exciting. You can't get that wrong.

It's strange that student debt is higher than ever at the same time that educating oneself is easier than ever.

Vibe coding is here to stay. I'd been worried it might be a fad, but I talked to the founder of an infrastructure company who's in a position to see how well vibe-coded apps are doing, and he said a lot of them are making money.

Actual traits of successful founders:

Good at building.
Genuinely interested in the problem.
Very determined.
Talks a lot to users.

Later we'll find it hard to believe that masked thugs were dragging people off the street at gunpoint. At least I hope we will, since the other alternative would be to decline into the kind of country where that's normal.

The test of character is how you treat the powerless.

If you're in high school and you want to start a startup one day, you might think the best thing to do now is to start startups. But it probably isn't.

If you keep acting like a banana republic, eventually you become one.

When I talk to more established startups, one of the first things I want to know, after asking about the growth rate and whether they're profitable, is whether the founders still have board control. I'm more optimistic about the company when the answer is yes.