CloudKnow

I got a sneak peak at Peter Seibel’s long awaited Coders at Work. Superb book!

My familiarity with the folks being interviewed varied; some I knew well, some in passing and some I had never heard of — like Bernie Cosell & Dan Ingalls. All the interviews were great to read, some of them were absolutely fascinating!

The thing I liked about the book were how these legendary programmers went about learning their craft, what attracted them to the field, lessons they learnt and their thought process. Some parts of the book reminded me of Tracy Kidder’s The Soul Of A New Machine.

It was interesting to note the common things people agree on:
- Most folks don’t like C++, some really hate it!
- Many of them are not happy with the available programming languages
- The importance of reading good code
- Second System Syndrome

A note about the author: The questions are a good mix of general and specifics depending on the person. The fact that Peter had to speak to such a diverse field and ask great follow up questions says a lot about his interest and knowledge in this field.

I have been exchanging emails with Peter regarding interviewing the folks on his initial user-submitted list. In my opinion, there is an incredible amount of wisdom among the folks on that list, interviewing them and sharing those interviews would help the community at large as well as the craft of software development. If you have thoughts on interesting ways we can get that done, please add your comments.

Go ahead and buy the book. It’s a great read, well worth your time and money. There is an older book called Programmers at Work by Susan Lammers, some of those interviews are available on Susan’s blog.

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