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.
Coding philosophy book: Writing Solid Code (1993) (Score:4, Informative)
I found Writing Solid Code [amazon.com] (Maguire, 1993) worth the read. Sure, some of what's in there is dated but many of the concepts are timeless and part of today's conventional wisdom.
Things like coding for security, coding for readability/maintenance, etc. etc.
Granted, those concepts weren't new in 1993 either, but many in the generation of programmers that cut their teeth on Turbo Pascal and 8-bit-machine BASIC never learned the lessons from 1960s mainframe code jockeys.
Re:Microserfs (Score:5, Informative)
Nah, Death March by Yourdon. I re-read it frequently and it never loses its luster.
Re:ah yes, anti-perl tirades are refreshing (Score:3, Informative)
In general, I agree with you. To nitpick, though...
Proving things is the domain of math, not science. In science, you can only find models which aren't disproven in a particular domain or by the body of experimental data. You can't prove your model is correct.
And the only reason you can do it in math is because you get to choose the assumptions and assume they're absolutely true.
Programmers at Work (1989) (Score:5, Informative)
Another similar book that is no longer in print is the semi-classic, Programmers at Work [amazon.com] subtitled Interviews With 19 Programmers Who Shaped the Computer Industry, (1986 /1989) by Susan Lammers [wordpress.com] which includes interviews with well-known or pioneer programmers such as Charles Simonyi (Microsoft), Bill Gates, Gary Kildall (Intergalactic Digital Research), Andy Hertzfield (Macintosh Operating System), John Warnock (Postscript) and C. Wayne Ratcliff (dBASE).
Re:Why Donald Knuth? (Score:5, Informative)
That guy is a relic of another age, and certainly not a coder; he's purely an academic in theoretical computer science.
He's good at making algorithms, but certainly not at coding.
You're ignorant. Have you ever used TeX or METAFONT? Knuth wrote them. The CWEB compiler? Knuth again. How about the MMIX simulator and assembler for MMIX architecture that Knuth designed to go along with TAOCP? Yep, Knuth. Want some more? See:
http://www-cs-staff.stanford.edu/~uno/programs.html [stanford.edu]
Re:Andy Hertzfeld... (Score:2, Informative)
You'll find him in "Programmers At Work" by Susan Lammers. That book was published by Microsoft Press back in 1986.
Re:Socially relevent (Score:3, Informative)
How about Hu Jintao, Paramount Leader of China, not to mention hydraulic engineer? I think there may be a few people in China who have heard of him.
Re:Socially relevent (Score:1, Informative)
Angela Merkel - PhD in physics.
And chancellor [~=president] of Germany, for our american friends...
Re:Programmers at Work (1989) (Score:3, Informative)
Simonyi is to blame for Hungarian notation. Sure, it turned into the opposite of all his recomendations, but he's still the mad scientist who created that monster.
Re:Socially relevent (Score:3, Informative)
And what exactly did Jimmy do in the field of nuclear engineering?
Jimmy Carter?
He was one of Americas first *ever* naval nuclear engineers wasn't he?