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    Coders at Work by Peter Seibel

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    (Paperback)

    • Pub. Date: September 2009
    • 632pp
    • Sales Rank: 21,305

      Reader Rating: (5 ratings)

      Detailed Rating: "Students" See All

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      Product Details

      • Pub. Date: September 2009
      • Publisher: Apress L. P.
      • Format: Paperback, 632pp
      • Sales Rank: 21,305

      Synopsis

      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 more, like how they became great programmers, how they recognize programming talent in others, and what kinds of problems they find most interesting.

      Hundreds of people have suggested names of programmers to interview on the Coders at Work web site: http://www.codersatwork.com. The complete list was 284 names. Having digested everyone’s feedback, we selected 16 folks who’ve been kind enough to agree to be interviewed:



      • Frances Allen: Pioneer in optimizing compilers, first woman to win the Turing Award (2006) and first female IBM fellow


      • Joe Armstrong: Inventor of Erlang


      • Joshua Bloch: Author of the Java collections framework, now at Google


      • Bernie Cosell: One of the main software guys behind the original ARPANET IMPs and a master debugger


      • Douglas Crockford: JSON founder, JavaScript architect at Yahoo!


      • L. Peter Deutsch: Author of Ghostscript, implementer of Smalltalk-80 at Xerox PARC and Lisp 1.5 on PDP-1


      • Brendan Eich: Inventor of JavaScript, CTO of the Mozilla Corporation


      • Brad Fitzpatrick: Writer of LiveJournal, OpenID, memcached, and Perlbal


      • Dan Ingalls:Smalltalk implementor and designer


      • Simon Peyton Jones: Coinventor of Haskell and lead designer of Glasgow Haskell Compiler


      • Donald Knuth: Author of The Art of Computer Programming and creator of TeX


      • Peter Norvig: Director of Research at Google and author of the standard text on AI


      • Guy Steele: Coinventor of Scheme and part of the Common Lisp Gang of Five, currently working on Fortress


      • Ken Thompson: Inventor of UNIX


      • Jamie Zawinski: Author of XEmacs and early Netscape/Mozilla hacker







      What you’ll learn

      How the best programmers in the world do their job

      Who is this book for?

      Programmers interested in the point of view of leaders in the field. Programmers looking for approaches that work for some of these outstanding programmers.

      Biography

      Peter Seibel is a serious developer of long standing. In the early days of the Web, he hacked Perl for Mother Jones Magazine and Organic Online. He participated in the Java revolution as an early employee at WebLogic which, after its acquisition by BEA, became the cornerstone of the latter’s rapid growth in the J2EE sphere. He has also taught Java programming at UC Berkeley Extension. He is the author of Practical Common LISP from Apress.

      Customer Reviews

      • Reader Rating:
      • Ratings: 5Reviews: 2

      Good read for those in the Industry and those Interested in the Industry and Computers in generalby johnnycoder

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      October 12, 2009: I enjoyed the interviews with former and current Yahoo and Google gurus, how they debug and what their thoughts for current programming projects. Their approach to software projects and the competitive nature of the Industry. As a programmer I would like to see other books on this subject. Thank you Peter Seibel!

      Great View from the Best Codersby Frank_FJS

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      September 25, 2009: What an interesting book!

      I never thought a book like this would get published and am so happy it did. Imagine being able to get a glimse of what legendary programmers/architects/engineers such as Brendan Eich, Joshua Bloch, Joe Armstrong, Peter Norvig, Simon Jones, Ken Thompson, Fran Allen, Bernie Cosell and Donald Knuth have to say about their life as a coder.

      Its like a dream come true for a developer/programmer like me (and I'm sure many others.)

      Some of the many (more than 30 per) sample questions that were asked:

      - How did one get into coding?

      - What were some successful projects?

      - What were some less-successful/failure projects and why?

      - What type of education is useful?

      - What tools does one use and why?

      - What does one enjoy about programming?

      - How one works with others and the dynamic of that.

      What impressed me most was the sheer range of approaches and motivations on display: everything from Jamie Zawinski's largely unschooled route to a formidable level of skill and subsequent major contributions to influential projects, to to Peter Norvig's uncommon combination of practical hacker wizardry with an almost ethereally playful interest in a variety of higher level topics, to Fran Allen's old school appreciation of quality systems and frustration at the amount of regression and small-concept thinking in the current state of the art, to Dan Ingalls' desire to make his software as flexible and alive as possible.

      Those interviewed also share insights into what they think of our modern world of programming. Most agree that we live in complicated and troubled times as we battle layer upon layer of software complexity. This book has lessons to be learned from the very brief history of our field, and advice for the future ("Keep it simple!").

      I'm a programmer who's read a lot of stuff about programming, including a lot of material by and about some the people in these interviews, and I could barely put the book down. If you're anything like me, you should get a lot out of this book.

      This book is for every level of programmer/developer...from beginner to advanced. Because no matter what level you are, you are always striving to learn more and who better to gain some valuable insight then the best in the field (literally).

      A great and must buy for any 'coder'.