2009-03-14-paul.graham.interview

---
layout: post
title: "An interview with Paul Graham"
slug: "paul.graham"
person: "Paul Graham"
summary: "Head of YCombinator, creator of the Arc language"
categories: ['mac', 'developer', 'web']
---
### Who are you, and what do you do?

Paul Graham. I [write essays](http://www.paulgraham.com/articles.html "Paul's collective essays."), work for [Y Combinator](http://ycombinator.com/ "A new-age venture firm.") funding and advising startups, work on a new [Lisp](http://www.paulgraham.com/lisp.html "Paul's page on the Lisp language.") dialect called [Arc](http://arclanguage.org/ "A new dialect of the Lisp language."), and administer a site called [Hacker News](http://news.ycombinator.com/ "News for hackers."), which is written in it.

### What hardware are you using?

What I actually sit in front of is a [MacBook Air][macbook-air] and a 23" [Cinema HD display][cinema-display]. I also have a server running [FreeBSD][] on the east coast, but that's going away soon.

### And what software?

I use surprisingly little client software. All I really use on my Mac is [Firefox][] and [Terminal][]. I use the usual Unix utilities (vi for editing). I use Arc for programming, which in turn runs on top of [MzScheme][]. I use [Dropbox][] for syncing. Online I use [Gmail][], [Google Calendar][google-calendar], [Etherpad][], [Snipshot][], [Picwing][], and, believe it or not, [Yahoo Store][small-business] for managing my site.

### What would be your dream setup?

I'd like it if the Air was about half the size. I don't know why Apple won't make something in between the Air and an iPhone. And of course I'd like to have infinite amounts of memory and an infinitely fast CPU.

I'd like it if the HD display was bigger and much lighter and didn't have such a massive octopus of cables attached to it. Then I'd be inclined to move it around more and work in different places.