I found an interesting book from my local library: Coders at Work: Reflections on the Craft of Programming is a book by Peter Seigel published in 2009. The book consist of 15 transcript style interviews where influential and merited programmers answer various kind of programming-related questions. I must admit I did not know even half of the interviewees in this book but I knew most of the technologies and software that they are famous for. Fortunately there is a short introduction of every person at the start of each chapter.
The interviewed programmers are quite heterogeneous group ranging from self-taught high school drop out Jamie Zawinski (early Netscape developer) to UNIX creator Ken Thompson and Donald Knuth (The Art of Computer Programming, TeX).
The first questions introduce the persons better (“How you started programming?”, “What was the first memorable program you wrote?”, “What are the tools you use?” etc.). Then the questions start to be more technical (“What’s the worst bug you’ve tracked down?” “How do you do debugging?” etc.) and often deal with the specific domain where the interviewee is an expert. The author is a programmer and it clearly shows in the questions. Even though many questions are the same from interview to interview Seigel does not follow a rigid pattern. Instead the questions flow naturally and at times the book feels more like a discussion from programmer to programmer which the reader is allowed to watch.
As one might expect there are as many approaches to programming as there are interviewed persons. In the interviews Seigel even asks if the person sees himself/herself as a scientist, an engineer, an artist, or a craftsman. It is interesting to read how different programmers answer to questions like “How important is mathematics?”, “How do you recognise a good programmer?” and “How do you familiarize yourself to code written by someone else?”.
The only disappointing thing is that most of the interviewed persons started programming several decades ago. The youngest interviewee is Brad Fitzpatrick, born in 1980. So some chapters may feel burdensome if you are not into nostalgia. I would not mind a second volume of the book with interviews concentrating on younger generation of programmers (people born in 70s and 80s).
To someone like me who is interested in programming as a form of “art” or “craft” this book is enlightening and must-have read. I do not recommend this for non-programmers or people who do not see any craftsmanship in software engineering.
The turn of the year 96/97 I spent either saving the Europe or invading it. The game was freakin’ hard! I think that I finished the Soviet campaign on normal but I never played through the last allied mission. Or something like that. Many years have passed since then.
