Coders At Work Review
|
Once in a while, you read a book that is filled with ‘aha’ moments. If you have written complex software for a while or want to become a good programmer then ‘Coders at work’ is a must read. This fantastic book interviews 15 master programmers. Some of the people interviewed in the book are well-known names such as Don Knuth, Ken Thompson, Jamie Zawinski and Peter Norvig.
Some comments on the content of the book:
Programming languages
Many of programmers interviewed started with BASIC and considered it an okay language. What is probably more surprising is the universal hatred of C++ in this group. In fact several people such as Peter Norvig and Ken Thompson (who goes on a tirade against C++) consider it a downright ugly and cumbersome language to work with.
Jamie Zawinski – C++ is just an abomination
Brad Fitzpatrick – The syntax is terrible and totally inconsistent and the error messages, at least from GCC, are ridiculous.
Ken Thompson – - By and large I think it’s a bad language. It does a lot of things half well and it’s just a garbage heap of ideas that are mutually exclusive. Everybody I know, whether it’s personal or corporate, selects a subset and these subsets are different. So it’s not a good language to transport an algorithm—to say, “I wrote it; here, take it.” It’s way too big, way too complex. And it’s obviously built by a committee.
On Programming and Curiosity
Almost everyone interviewed still programs (some do occasionally) and enjoys hacking and taking things apart. Many were misfits and took unusual career paths to get to where they are today. There is a rebel and hacker streak in all of the them. Most of them stumbled into programming and discovered that they were good at that at some point. Everyone emphasized the practice of writing good code readable code. Everyone laments that you cannot understand a system from the bottom upwards as systems have become more and more complex and layers of abstraction have multiplied manifold.
On categorizing programming and building software
The opinion is pretty much evenly split on whether programming is a science, art, craftsmanship or engineering with a slight bias towards craftsmanship.
On Recommended Books
Among the books recommended, “The Art of computer programming” by Don Knuth topped the list for obvious reasons. Another books which was recommended by several people was the “Psychology of computer programming” by Gerald Weinberg.
On the state of computer science
The mood on the state of developments in computer science was fairly pessimistic and most people pointed to the fact that many of the breakthrough ideas for computer science were conceived in the ’70s (with the notable exception of the internet and web programming)
The only downside here is the interview of Fran Allen. It should not have made the book. I got the distinct feeling that much of the work that she claimed credit for is implemented by others and she was the manager of those projects (probably a good one but that is hardly the same as being a good programmer).
I have added some notes (for further reading) and quotes from the book on the wiki
Did you buy this on amazon or at a local book store ? If an Indian edition is available, I would like to buy it. Thx.
I don’t think an Indian version is available yet.