Coders At Work 207
Vladimir Sedach writes "Aside from authoring narrowly focused technical books, teaching
university courses, or mentoring others in the workplace, programmers
don't often get a chance to pass on the knowledge of the practise of
programming as a profession. Peter
Seibel's Coders at Work takes fifteen world-class
programmers and distills their wisdom into a book of interviews with
each of them." Keep reading for Vladimir's review.
The list of coders interviewed includes some geek household names
like Donald Knuth and jwz, but also some not so well-known ones such
as Bernie Cosell (one of the programmers behind the ARPANET IMP, the
first Internet router) and Fran Allen (compiler pioneer). The full
list of people interviewed is available on the book's website. The eras
embodied by the interviewees range from the very beginnings of
software as we know it today, to the heyday of the Internet boom, when
people like Brad Fitzpatrick made their mark.
Coders at Work | |
author | Peter Seibel |
pages | 632 |
publisher | Apress |
rating | 8 |
reviewer | Vladimir Sedach |
ISBN | 978-1430219484 |
summary | How the best programmers in the world do their job |
Seibel himself is a coder and author (having the well-received Practical Common Lisp under his belt). It is then no surprise that the interviews are packed with technical details, which (with one exception, explained below) restricts the intended audience of the book to those already familiar with programming.
Coders at Work manages to communicate the wisdom of programmers of bygone eras, while simultaneously being heavily colored by very contemporary issues. JavaScript, its consequences and its discontents, is a topic recurring throughout the book. More than just a recounting of history, Coders at Work should inspire readers to learn about the wider context of their craft and stop the reinvention of the proverbial wheel decried by several of the interviewees in its pages.
Given the related subject matter, the people interviewed in Coders at Work who played a role in creating major programming languages (Armstrong, Eich, and Steele), and close publication dates of the two books, inevitable comparisons will be drawn between Coders at Work and Federico Biancuzzi and Shane Warden's Masterminds of Programming (I previously reviewed Masterminds of Programming on my blog). There is a lot of common ground between the two books in terms of technical areas covered, but Coders at Work clearly comes out on top.
Part of the reason has to do with the fact that Seibel's choice of interviewees is stellar. Masterminds of Programming's niche focus on programming language designers meant that its authors had a tougher job than Seibel, but details like the omission of Alan Kay (creator of Smalltalk and one of the most influential programming language designers in the field's history) from Masterminds are nothing short of dumbfounding.
Just as important to making Coders at Work a good book is the fact that Seibel is a great interviewer. Seibel's questions felt more open-ended than those in Masterminds, and the resulting interviews have a flow and narrative that makes them engrossing to read and gives the programmers interviewed a chance to explore details in-depth.
A refreshing aspect of Coders at Work are the interviewees who don't shy away from strong opinions or humor, as shown in this remark by Peter Deutsch, "I think Larry Wall has a lot of nerve talking about language design--Perl is an abomination as a language." One aspect where Coders unintentionally shines is as a guide to finding and hiring programming talent. Even non-technical managers will benefit greatly by reading those excerpts of the interviews concerned with hiring programmers.
Another unexpected aspect of the book is the breadth of topics discussed — everything from debugging machine code to women's issues in computing workplace and education.
One area where Coders could stand improvement is in its length. Not all of the coders interviewed possessed the gift of brevity, and many interview answers could have been edited to reduce their length without affecting the message.
In her interview, Fran Allen makes an interesting assertion — programming and computer science need to become more socially relevant. Other scientific and engineering fields are filled with well-known personalities, described in prominent interviews, biographies, and major Hollywood films. The only "software people" to appear in the public spotlight are the CEOs of major software firms. Ultimately, its role in helping programming assert its status as a socially relevant profession may be the most important contribution of Coders at Work.
You can purchase Coders at Work from amazon.com. Slashdot welcomes readers' book reviews -- to see your own review here, read the book review guidelines, then visit the submission page.
Women's issues in computing workplace (Score:5, Funny)
I know I am not alone in deploring the puerile comments and immature attitudes of male programmers.
In every computing workplace where I have worked, men have behaved like sex-crazed animals and women have *never* felt comfortable working topless.
Re:Coders that work? (Score:2, Funny)
by "work" they must mean reading slashdot all day.
Re:Women's issues in computing workplace (Score:5, Funny)
Curious: What employer asked/required you to work topless? ...and where might I submit my application?
Re:Women's issues in computing workplace (Score:1, Funny)
Re:Women's issues in computing workplace (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Useless book. (Score:5, Funny)
Judging from the construction of his statement*, not Steven Colbert. That narrows it down a bit.
*My evidence? The use of the "or" conjunction, which in English is semantically equivalent to a logical XOR.
Re:Biggest Gripe about coding .. shouldn't be code (Score:4, Funny)
I'm disguted, repeatedly. . .
Sounds painful. Hope you get over it soon.
Re:Biggest Gripe about coding .. shouldn't be code (Score:3, Funny)
I hear you. I remember when, back on my Apple II+, I could write new music on my sequencer (with fully sampled orchestral sounds - no external hardware needed), download new mp3s from Amazon.com, and chat in real-time with some friends, all at the same time. I remember how easy it was to stream real-time video wirelessly to my TV. Programming interfaces was a snap as well, with fully-featured APIs available for several different flavors of operating systems.
I remember how just about any information you could want was available on the Internet with just a click of a mouse. I especially loved how I could order just about anything online - no more hectic holiday shopping for me! Also, remember how awesome the videogames used to look and play? Why, those first-person shooters practically looked photo-realistic. It was amazing how well they ran on such old hardware.
Integrating new hardware and devices was far easier as well. We could just pick up a new gizmo and plug it to the Apple II's USB port, and damned if the computer didn't just instantly recognize it and load up some drivers. Best of all, you could pick up a new, reasonably powerful computer for about $1000 or so.
Man, those were the days... Oh, wait. I'm thinking of *today's computers*.
Re:ah yes, anti-perl tirades are refreshing (Score:2, Funny)
I come from a physics background and most physicists used to, and may still, program in FORTRAN, yet FORTRAN is a terrible programming language.
Ah yes, but in fairness most physicists are terrible programmers :) I'm not excluding myself either, but it stands to reason that someone who uses programming as just one of a multitude of tools to do their job won't be as good at it as someone who's job *is* programming.
Fortran has the virtue of being simple - certainly compared to C++, which has replaced it, at least in particle physics. It's thus less likely that a non-professional programmer will shoot themselves in the foot.
Re:Women's issues in computing workplace (Score:3, Funny)
My powers of repression and selective memory are pretty impressive. I've seen goatse, and still manage to live a pretty good semblance of a normal life.