Loading...
2nd out of 6 books
—
1 voter
My rating:
add to my books
Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming
by
Peter Seibel
Peter Seibel interviews 16 of the most interesting computer programmers alive today in Coders at Work, offering a brand-new companion volume to Apress’s highly acclaimed best-seller Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston. As the words "at work" suggest, Peter Seibel focuses on how his interviewees tackle the day–to–day work of programming, while revealing much mo...more
Paperback, 632 pages
Published
September 11th 2009
by Apress
(first published 2009)
There is a good chance some of your friends read this book. Sign in to see!
sign in »
Friend Reviews
To see what your friends thought of this book,
please sign up.
Community Reviews
(showing
1-30
of
1,250)
A great collection of interviews with fifteen different programmers, conducted by a programmer.
It's been a long time since I've read a technical book that really resonated with me, but this is one of them. I picked up this book on the recommendation of a programmer who included it in a small collection of great books about programming that included 'The C Programming Language' and 'Programming Pearls' -- two of my favorites. I wasn't disappointed.
The collection of pro...more
It's been a long time since I've read a technical book that really resonated with me, but this is one of them. I picked up this book on the recommendation of a programmer who included it in a small collection of great books about programming that included 'The C Programming Language' and 'Programming Pearls' -- two of my favorites. I wasn't disappointed.
The collection of pro...more
I liked this book but don't necessarily recommend it. I think what's to be gained out of it is personal.
What I really liked about this book: By various definitions, these people are great ones in our field. Or, if that's too strong for you, they've all had their hand in something great. Something that has shaped - directly or indirectly - what programmers do every day.
And they're mostly regular people. Smart? Yes, often genius. Also lucky. I was fascinated at time...more
What I really liked about this book: By various definitions, these people are great ones in our field. Or, if that's too strong for you, they've all had their hand in something great. Something that has shaped - directly or indirectly - what programmers do every day.
And they're mostly regular people. Smart? Yes, often genius. Also lucky. I was fascinated at time...more
This book is made out of interviews with influential and well known people from both the academical side and from the industry of software development. It gives the reader a good glimpse of how these people conduct their work and their history with programming and computer science. It was very rewarding and inspiring at times and also burst some bubbles about these hero coders.
A lot of the interviewed people are computer language creators or evangelists (Steele, Armstrong, Allen) and ...more
A lot of the interviewed people are computer language creators or evangelists (Steele, Armstrong, Allen) and ...more
A wonderful book which gives insight into the thinking of the "Programming" Gurus or the "Coding" Gurus.
Most of them consider Donald Knuth's books "The Art of Computer Programming" as an important set of books to be ready by all programmers.
There is no consensus on if they consider themselves to be a Scientist, a Craftsman, an Artist or an Engineer. Most agree that they are not Scientist although the word "Computer Science" seems to...more
Most of them consider Donald Knuth's books "The Art of Computer Programming" as an important set of books to be ready by all programmers.
There is no consensus on if they consider themselves to be a Scientist, a Craftsman, an Artist or an Engineer. Most agree that they are not Scientist although the word "Computer Science" seems to...more
What felt missing to me, and why this is only 4 stars, was any attempt to pull the interviews together and synthesize something from them.
Instead, we get a book where, for example, N-1 coders are asked if they read Knuth right through, or use it for reference, or have not read it; and this is followed by Knuth basically demolishing the foundations of any conclusions you might be able to make from their answers, with a offhand comment that "I sometimes wonder if I can read them." ...more
Instead, we get a book where, for example, N-1 coders are asked if they read Knuth right through, or use it for reference, or have not read it; and this is followed by Knuth basically demolishing the foundations of any conclusions you might be able to make from their answers, with a offhand comment that "I sometimes wonder if I can read them." ...more
Informal interviews with different programmers, talking about code and their opinions on process.
I got through maybe half the interviews and put it aside. Not because it isn't well done (it is) but because I found it hard to connect to any of the people interviewed. With one exception, they're all hardcore computer science guys from a generation older than I. At least two of them don't even write code any more, they're talking about the code they use to write.
Living up ...more
I got through maybe half the interviews and put it aside. Not because it isn't well done (it is) but because I found it hard to connect to any of the people interviewed. With one exception, they're all hardcore computer science guys from a generation older than I. At least two of them don't even write code any more, they're talking about the code they use to write.
Living up ...more
This is an interesting and informative set of interviews, but one of the things that struck me about the lives of many of these coders is that they defied the commonly held belief that the success of the silicon era ignores birth status and education (see Bill Gates as the most famous example). The fact is that while these coders studied many of the same things that I did as a kid (the ones that are my age), the key difference between them and myself was that many of them were born into auspici...more
view all 5 comments
I enjoyed this, but it's something you're only going to care about if you're a programmer by trade.
The book is a collect of interviews w/ a lot of progamming luminaries, ranging from jwz to ken thompson (unix guy) to the dude who wrote livejournal to the guy who wrote the first "internet-message-processor" (IMP)-- essentially the world's first internet router.
a lot of the older dudes recount starting off on punch card machines or time share PDPs.... it's inte...more
The book is a collect of interviews w/ a lot of progamming luminaries, ranging from jwz to ken thompson (unix guy) to the dude who wrote livejournal to the guy who wrote the first "internet-message-processor" (IMP)-- essentially the world's first internet router.
a lot of the older dudes recount starting off on punch card machines or time share PDPs.... it's inte...more
One of my many, many areas of deep intellectual insecurity is computer programming.
As a kid I remember writing BASIC programs on paper in the backseat of the car during family trips to Florida. I also remember spending hours on my Vic 20 as a kid and even crashing it a few times trying to execute 6502 assembly with POKE and JMP. I whizzed through FORTRAN and Pascal my freshman year at Purdue.
Then tragedy struck the next year as I got my first B in college from a microproc...more
As a kid I remember writing BASIC programs on paper in the backseat of the car during family trips to Florida. I also remember spending hours on my Vic 20 as a kid and even crashing it a few times trying to execute 6502 assembly with POKE and JMP. I whizzed through FORTRAN and Pascal my freshman year at Purdue.
Then tragedy struck the next year as I got my first B in college from a microproc...more
Heavy on the academics, this book probably should have been title "Lisp Coders at Work" as Lisp was the common theme throughout each interview. That and "The Art of Computer Programming" by Knuth. Or literate programming, also by Knuth.
Some of the interview questions became a little tiring (e.g. "When did you first learn to program", "Do you consider yourself a scientist, engineer, craftsman, or artist", etc.) but there were bright points in n...more
Some of the interview questions became a little tiring (e.g. "When did you first learn to program", "Do you consider yourself a scientist, engineer, craftsman, or artist", etc.) but there were bright points in n...more
Four start with a big asterisk.
Overall, this is a fascinating book that any programmer will enjoy. Seibel does a nice job asking questions that are particular to each person, but also trying to get a variety of opinions on the same questions that face all programmers. (E.g., how do you debug? how do you read new code? how do you identify good programmers?)
The problem with the book is the interview with Fran Allen. If you look up "women" in the index, you'll find...more
Overall, this is a fascinating book that any programmer will enjoy. Seibel does a nice job asking questions that are particular to each person, but also trying to get a variety of opinions on the same questions that face all programmers. (E.g., how do you debug? how do you read new code? how do you identify good programmers?)
The problem with the book is the interview with Fran Allen. If you look up "women" in the index, you'll find...more
Coders at work transcribes 16 some odd interviews of both new and old school programming giants culminating with Donald Knuth. For me it was the right book at the right time. After a year of studying algorithms, languages, and hardware, it was good to hear the voices of experience detailing the struggles of their day-to-days. In some cases their lessons reassured me that I hadn't missed some magic programming spells, in others I felt grossly outmatched by their experience and casual referenci...more
The book was requested by my 20-year old son, who is a computer science major studying programming language, for his birthday. I browsed through it, found it interesting and ended up reading the whole thing. This book satisfied the geek in me. It was self-validating for me to read about others who are passionate about software development - its not something you read about often. Quite a few of the people interviewed were actually quite a bit older than me - so it was interesting to read abo...more
i had to stop about halfway through because i'm having a frustrating couple of weeks at work and the last thing i want to do when i'm relaxing with a book at night is read *more* about programming. the half i read was really interesting, though, and i'm sure i'll come back to this, though i might read it one chapter at a time as opposed to tackling it all at once. seibel interviews various famous programmers, asks them how they got started, how they recognize talent, what they think of unit te...more
I'm not saying that my code is as good as Bernie Cossell's but, as it turns out, I work like he used to. I try to think many steps ahead, I use any change in the client's requirements as a good excuse to fix things that actually work, then feel guilty about the time spent that way but stay hopeful that the resulting increase in elegance and reliability will somehow pay off someday. I'm happy he approves of doing business that way, though it's discouraging that he gave up on the whole field. I'm ...more
There's not really any insight in this book; as others have pointed out, the questions are basically cocktail party smalltalk. Also, most of the responses could have been whittled down considerably. The only really enjoyable parts were Fran Allen's historical accounts and speculations on why we see few women in computing and Ken Thompson's dissing C++.
It doesn't help at all that the typesetting is absolutely horrendous: sans serif, ragged right, with boldface applied haphazardly.
...more
It doesn't help at all that the typesetting is absolutely horrendous: sans serif, ragged right, with boldface applied haphazardly.
...more
The interviews were insightful, giving a candid glimpse into the working lives of some of the top-shelf guys in computer science.
About the print copy though, the editing was bad, with tons of typos, random paragraphs in bold, and even the italics for the chapter preface continuing into the body of the chapter in at least one instance. I'm not even that especially that close of a reader, but it is almost as if no one flipped through the final version before going to print. It's a sham...more
About the print copy though, the editing was bad, with tons of typos, random paragraphs in bold, and even the italics for the chapter preface continuing into the body of the chapter in at least one instance. I'm not even that especially that close of a reader, but it is almost as if no one flipped through the final version before going to print. It's a sham...more
Coders at Work is one long read into the lives of several fantastic computer scientists, the software-writing variety. Peter Seibel interviews sixteen "programmers", among them Joe Armstrong (Erlang), Brad Fitzpatrick (OpenID, memcached), Simon Peyton Jones (Haskell), THE Donald Knuth, Peter Norvig (AI), and Ken Thompson (UNIX). A few of the missing topics: high-performance computing, social networking, peer-to-peer file-sharing, more Internet.
Each interview goes over a nu...more
Each interview goes over a nu...more
I enjoyed reading this book but I couldn't feel excited about some of the interviews in it. I didn't know some of the technical topics and techniques referenced, that might be the cause for my lack of enthusiasm but I do enjoyed reading people like Knuth or Norvig saying 'No, some folks got it totally wrong and that's why the message most people got is not what I meant!'
Something I have been always annoyed with is the lack of relevant background while I went through college courses, it was more ...more
Something I have been always annoyed with is the lack of relevant background while I went through college courses, it was more ...more
Coders at Work has received a great deal of press within the Internet circles where I travel. Hardly a week goes by where someone doesn't post an except onto reddit or Hacker News or something. So I was already fairly familiar with it and some of the interviews in it. That sort of press made it almost inevitable that I'd eventually buy it to read in full.
It's a collection of interviews with fifteen different luminaries of the programming world. Surprisingly, I knew fewer than half of ...more
It's a collection of interviews with fifteen different luminaries of the programming world. Surprisingly, I knew fewer than half of ...more
This is a book by a computer programmer interviewing other programmers and is best read by a programmer. In short, it's very good for a specialized audience. Actually, that's a bit exaggerated as anyone with an abiding interest in computer science and software development will learn something from the opinions of those who have shaped it in so many ways. The reader will definitely need some technical knowledge to understand many of the references - not a bad thing, I'm just managing your expect...more
A must-read for any software developer, this book consists of at-length interviews with top talent in the craft. This book drives home that software development is about clear, literate communication and deep thinking about philosophical approaches to problem solving, as much as it's about tools and techniques. It'll also be eye-opening for some to see some of the popular fads and fetishes that these experts call "BS" on.
As s software developer I found this book inspiring, ...more
As s software developer I found this book inspiring, ...more
If you are thinking about being a programmer, pick any interview from this book and read it. If, after reading it, you aren't excited about programming, then just stop. This is the best book I've ever read that gets inside the mind of a great programmer. True greats, the pioneers of computer science and industry achievement.
I learned things about programming, such as the usefulness of monads and closures, that had been previously under appreciated. I found the interviewees to be extr...more
I learned things about programming, such as the usefulness of monads and closures, that had been previously under appreciated. I found the interviewees to be extr...more
I was initially very excited about this book's concept: a collection of interviews with many of computer science's best programmers. Unfortunately, this book is little more than that, and I came away a bit disappointed.
The quality of each individual interview is quite good. The reader gets a good sense of the interviewee's personal story, development philosophy, and personality.
But taken as a whole, the interview format becomes rather repetitive, and there is little to ...more
The quality of each individual interview is quite good. The reader gets a good sense of the interviewee's personal story, development philosophy, and personality.
But taken as a whole, the interview format becomes rather repetitive, and there is little to ...more
Seibel reminds me of the NPR journalists who ask the best questions of these masters of Code. As I read through the pages, I find Seibel has asked not only those questions that popped into my head but also questions I'd never have thought of.
Programming is more like a craft than an art or a science. It follows then that it is probably best learned under a mentor / master. For those of us out there for whom this isn't realistic, this book might be the next best thing.
Programming is more like a craft than an art or a science. It follows then that it is probably best learned under a mentor / master. For those of us out there for whom this isn't realistic, this book might be the next best thing.
I really liked this book. It was great to see the different perspectives that people had. There are some interesting opinions. E.g:
Douglas Crockford: "I would actually rather see people start as English majors than as math majors to get into programming"
"Thompson and Ritchie did the world a disservice by not defining the pretty-print presentation for C". (This is interesting as Pike and Thompson did define a pretty-print presentation for Go.)
Douglas Crockford: "I would actually rather see people start as English majors than as math majors to get into programming"
"Thompson and Ritchie did the world a disservice by not defining the pretty-print presentation for C". (This is interesting as Pike and Thompson did define a pretty-print presentation for Go.)
Nice, informal conversations with 'famous' programmers (for some definition of famous).
The conversations are enjoyable to read, and the contrast in styles and opinions among top programmers was surprising.
Be warned that the programmers just talk about their work, assuming the reader knows alot of the context, so if you have no idea what a card reader, a PDP-11, or PL-1 is, you might well get lost.
The conversations are enjoyable to read, and the contrast in styles and opinions among top programmers was surprising.
Be warned that the programmers just talk about their work, assuming the reader knows alot of the context, so if you have no idea what a card reader, a PDP-11, or PL-1 is, you might well get lost.
I liked Seibel's Practical Common Lisp, but that was a technical book. This is a rather different beast -- a book about how various programmers (a couple of whom I've never heard of, a couple of whom have been heroes of mine for a long time) think about coding. And Seibel is a good interviewer as well as being a good technical writer! So this book was a rare treat.
This is a great book for people who think in one direction. I really learned a lot from this book especially to be an open-minded person about different languages and technologies. I realized that there is no language that's the answer to everything and that we should be context-sensitive in our choice of languages and technologies. This book is a great enrichment to any programmer and is guaranteed to change some of your bad attitudes. The only thing that I didn't like about this book is th...more
This one confirms my self taught method of programming....there are so many different ways to do it....while perseverance and stamina are important....i rediscovered the need to successfully argue your coding approach with your team colleagues....thus explaining why coders seem combative....enlightening info on how the work gets done....coding is the ultimate game....
There are no discussion topics on this book yet.
Be the first to start one »
Goodreads is Hiring Engineers!
If you like books like these and love to build cool products, we may be looking for you.
Learn more »
Learn more »
Readers Also Enjoyed
Share This Book
No trivia or quizzes yet. Add some now »
“Zawinski: Sometimes. I end up doing all the sysadmin crap, which I can't stand-I've never liked it. I enjoy working on XScreenSaver because in some ways screen savers-the actual display modes rather than the XScreenSaver framework-are the perfect program because they almost always start from scratch and they do something pretty and there's never a version 2.0. There's very rarely a bug in a screen saver. It crashes-oh, there's a divide-by-zero and you fix that.”
—
1 person liked it
“And once I realized that code I write never fucking goes away and I'm going to be a maintainer for life. I get comments about blog posts that are almost 10 years old. "Hey, I found this code. I found a bug," and I'm suddenly maintaining code.”
—
1 person liked it
More quotes…
