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lavellemt's review against another edition
4.5
I loved this book! Great recommendation from my mom. The author interviewed so many people, and told so many great stories. Would be interesting to read again in 10 years and see how much of it stands the rest of time.
ida_s's review against another edition
5.0
I really enjoyed this! Very well-written and interesting.
dimayj's review against another edition
5.0
I found this book to be a fascinating read. It blends psychology, entrepreneurship, and history, with a sociological account of coders, coder culture, and coder mindset. It is well-researched and contains numerous interviews with coders, tech entrepreneurs, and researchers.
Clive Thompson navigates through the history of coding and how coder culture has changed since the 1950s. The author digs deep into the psychology of coders and how it affects the code they write and the software they produce. He also presents a balanced discussion of the stereotypes, sexism, and racism in the industry and whether coding is a meritocracy. I really enjoyed every page of the book, particularly the last 4 chapters, which delve into hacker culture, bias in artificial intelligence and how it influences society, social media and issues related to scaling and big tech, and finally, the rise of blue-collar coding.
In short, the book is deep, insightful, engaging, and a thoroughly enjoyable read. Take your time reading it because there's a lot to absorb, but it is well worth it. I've read it twice and I'm sure I'll revisit the book again.
Clive Thompson navigates through the history of coding and how coder culture has changed since the 1950s. The author digs deep into the psychology of coders and how it affects the code they write and the software they produce. He also presents a balanced discussion of the stereotypes, sexism, and racism in the industry and whether coding is a meritocracy. I really enjoyed every page of the book, particularly the last 4 chapters, which delve into hacker culture, bias in artificial intelligence and how it influences society, social media and issues related to scaling and big tech, and finally, the rise of blue-collar coding.
In short, the book is deep, insightful, engaging, and a thoroughly enjoyable read. Take your time reading it because there's a lot to absorb, but it is well worth it. I've read it twice and I'm sure I'll revisit the book again.
mtdmali's review against another edition
4.0
I might be biased considering I write code to make a living, but I found this book to be pretty fascinating. I certainly feel a little more validated, as I connected with a lot of the descriptions of programmers in this book. I would definitely recommend this book to people who want to learn more about coding (as opposed to actually learning to code, which is very different).
walices's review against another edition
medium-paced
3.25
The fact that the book is split up into sections is very helpful, because I skipped the entire section about AI (keep in mind that this book was published before the COVID pandemic...) Overall, it gave lots of insight into how the CS job market is faring and what it'll evolve into in the future. I think every person who's involved with CS or cybersec should be familiar with what's happening in the world and the history of big startups such as Grubhub (I don't actually remember what other startups they talked about whoops!) There's also a section discussing "computer spouses," literally just going over what it feels like to date and live with an avid programmer, which was funny.
I just gave it a 3.25 rating because it doesn't get into the technical nitty gritty as much, which is both a good and bad thing. Bad because it comes off feeling like a shell of what it's trying to cover. Good because laypeople can understand everything the book is referring to. Overall, however, very solid book with lots of interviews with people in and surrounding the industry.
I just gave it a 3.25 rating because it doesn't get into the technical nitty gritty as much, which is both a good and bad thing. Bad because it comes off feeling like a shell of what it's trying to cover. Good because laypeople can understand everything the book is referring to. Overall, however, very solid book with lots of interviews with people in and surrounding the industry.
nakedsushi's review against another edition
1.0
I mainly jumped around in this book since it's organized more as a collection of long essays. Some things that Thompson observes in his writing are spot on (like how coders mostly have "boundless, nigh masochistic ability to endure brutal, grinding frustration."), but others are just lazy reporting and further perpetuates the stereotype of what a coder is and what they're typically thinking. Reading the book made me jump wildly between, "Hey, that's me!" and "Ugh, that's not true."
Maybe I'm not the intended audience for this book, but if I (a coder) am not, then I don't know who this book is for. Surely people who don't write code don't actually want to read about people writing code, right? It's not exactly exciting or glamorous.
Maybe I'm not the intended audience for this book, but if I (a coder) am not, then I don't know who this book is for. Surely people who don't write code don't actually want to read about people writing code, right? It's not exactly exciting or glamorous.