[jamesmcintyre]

Regardless it seems Graham drawing a synthesis between hackers and painters worked well as a generative metaphor to accomplish what he explained the books purpose was: "This book is an attempt to explain to the world at large what goes on in the world of computers."

In the end can your antithesis exercise as many readers' imaginations and share as much insight as his book has?

What I got from your blog post is that there are better books for one interested in the similarities between art and computer science and that is helpful information but I own a copy of Gödel, Escher, Bach and it's certainly not a light read.

Maybe your right, "Hackers and Painters" doesn't belong in the same category as the other books you mentioned but then the authors of those books probably had different intentions for their material.