Indeed, if pg is a pseudo-intellectual, then the word "intellectual" has so little meaning as to be useless.
That's not ball washing. That's a comparison to the journalists, academics, writers, editors, analysts, etc etc who aspire to that public identity.
Not to mention his academic qualifications: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paul_Graham_(computer_programme...
And was one of the first people to use probabilistic methods to fight spam, which is what finally made spam an almost non-issue.
For what it's worth, I wrote the code that did this in SpamAssassin just slightly before Pg published "A plan for spam". Although he had some very useful improvements to the algorithm which I rolled in.
Ha neat! Thanks for your part in the war on spam, we all owe you a debt of gratitude :-)
And was quite prominent in the Lisp community, back in the day too.
That might still be an understatement. He wrote one of the top books for (Common) Lisp: http://www.paulgraham.com/onlisp.html
Peter Norvig on the book: http://www.amazon.com/review/RRFAH7G81ASUL/ref=cm_cr_dp_titl...
"Founded a successful web apps company back in the 1990s when that wasn't common, and sold it to Yahoo"
While that is awesome, it is a substantially different game we play nowadays than in the 90's.
Correct, and pg is not writing code for startups now, but investing in them, sharing his experience with them (mentoring), connecting them to follow-on investors, and supporting the process of growing those startups in which he has an active interest.
Hence, YC, etc.
- Founded a successful web apps company back in the 1990s when that wasn't common, and sold it to Yahoo
- Founded Y Combinator to advise and invest in startups
- Smart investor with substantial success and track record (Dropbox, AirBnB, etc)
In other words, he's earned a reputation for doing some very smart things, and documenting them in clear, easily understood language, over the past 20 years.
I'm not being a mirer or a nuthugger here. I participate in HN because it benefits me and I learn useful things amidst the noise. (And of course pg started this site too.)