Skip to content

Architects know that some kinds of design problems are more personal than others. One of the cleanest, most abstract design problems is designing bridges. There your job is largely a matter of spanning a given distance with the least material. The other end of the spectrum is designing chairs. Chair designers have to spend their time thinking about human butts.

— Paul Graham

Another quote →

Topics

Architecture

More quotes by Paul Graham

Software has to be designed by hackers who understand design, not designers who know a little about software. If you can't design software as well as implement it, don't start a startup.

A programming language is for thinking of programs, not for expressing programs you've already thought of.

The most important thing is to be able to think what you want, not to say what you want.

The best thing software can be is easy, but the way to do this is to get the defaults right, not to limit users' choices.

There are few sources of energy so powerful as a procrastinating grad student.

All Paul Graham quotes →

You may also like

The civil engineer is the real 19th century architect.

William Burges

Architects and engineers are among the most fortunate of men since they build their own monuments with public consent, public approval and often public money.

John Prebble

The sight of such a monument is like continual and stationary music, which one hears for one's good as one approaches it.

Anne Louise Germaine de Staël Corinne (1807)

Rich windows that exclude the light,
And passages that lead to nothing.

Thomas Gray

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Paul Graham (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.