Hackers and Painters is a collection of essays by Y Combinator founder Paul Graham about what makes a good computer programmer and how they code the future.

Paul Graham was one of the early adopters of the internet, having launched a company called Viaweb in 1995, which was the first business to offer an online application as a service.

Viaweb allowed their users to set up their own, very simple online stores, and was sold to Yahoo! for about $50 million three years after its founding.

Today, Graham is mostly known for founding Y Combinator, one of the most successful venture capital companies in the world, with investments in over 400 startups including household names like Dropbox, AirBnB, and Stripe.

This book is a collection of Graham's essays about programming, startups, entrepreneurship, and other topics, revealing the thinking behind his path to success.