There’s been a lot of talk about Peter Seibel’s new book, Coders at Work, recently, so I decided to
read it as well. I’m definitely glad I did; It’s a very readable book, with some very good programmers and designers’ views on debugging, programing, and other technical topics. Among those interviewed are jwz, Peter Norvig, and of course Donald Knuth, among others. This book seems inspired by another one I’m reading, Masterminds of Programming, but I enjoyed this one a lot more.
The book consists of 17 interviews with different programmers in a wide variety of domains. There’s a lot to absorb, and it’s pretty instructive to see how many of these coders don’t rely on modern tools such as debuggers or IDEs. While the interviews are pretty organic and aren’t exactly alike, Siebel does ask all of them some of the same questions, and it’s nice to see that different approaches can work equally well. Each programmers approach to API design is another one of the big ones he tends to ask, which is what I’d consider one of the most important parts of being a programmer.
I’d definitely recommend reading this book - there is a lot of useful information to absorb from it. It’s hard to pinpoint specific lessons, but it should at least make you think about your methods and techniques. It’s a very readable book, enjoyable to read and easy to understand. I’m with Joel on this - you should definitely read this book.
Tags: book