Software developers are typically bright people but possess few social contacts who approach the world like them. Such loneliness is famously parodied by stereotypes. Even the most social among us have a difficult time relating to others what programming is like. In this work, Seibel provides interviews with 15 accomplished programmers and alleviates some of that alone-ness. In so doing, he explains to the English-speaking world how computer programming has grown and is currently practiced.

The interviewees compose a veritable who’s who of computer science – including, at the end, Donald Knuth, who is widely regarded as the best programmer of all time. Fran Allen, a widely recognized female programmer, is included. Some were educated well at Harvard or MIT. Others were, to a large degree, self-taught before the discipline of computer science was established. All convey a unique perspective about how they write code.

For the most part, Seibel asks each person a similar set of questions: about their background, formative experiences, approach to the craft of coding, and their approach to a new trend of literate programming. It’s amazing to see how wide the range of different opinions is! They all seem to disagree, especially about very important things. Providing room for (sometimes heated) disagreements is healthy for computer programmers who are smart but have few companions. After all, we must work together to accomplish work.

This is not a technical work. Neither code nor math is presented. It’s more of a biographical work of 16 different programmers. It spans the lanes of human interest and computer science. Non-programmers might be interested in learning how IT people work, but the obvious audience here consists of software developers. By grabbing big-name interviews, Seibel hits the sweet spot for this audience and knocks a homer out of the park.

In particular, expositions such as this allow people to see the history of computing. Readers get to see innovators, spanning back to the 1950s until the date of publication in 2009. These people changed the world such that a mini-computer resides in many people’s pockets in the developed world, in the form of a smart phone. They went from coding in assembly code to writing in higher-level languages to co-writing in more everyday language. That history of science will be of interest to readers in the future when future students seek to learn about the “old days” when computers were young. And we will have the writer Peter Seibel to thank.

This book is an enjoyable collection of interviews of some well known personalities in the computer industry. These interviews run the gamut of topics: understanding programs, writing code, how programmers view themselves, and working with others to name a few. However, the most fantastic thing about the viewpoints is this: they differ.

The diversity of approaches, mindset, attitude, and execution of each of the coders interviewed is a welcome change from the onslaught of the "best practices" mindset which has become increasingly popular in recent years. Even more amazing is the levels of success that they have achieved in spite of (or perhaps, because of) their differences.

While some would find the repetition of questions or extended stories regarding the history of each coder yawn-inducing, I found it to be a refreshing break from the standard computer book fare. If you want to learn about a specific language, platform, or development process, you will want to buy a different book; it covers these topics in only the broadest sense.

My only gripes are minor: first, there are a surprising amount of typos. Second, the book tends to drag when Seibel does more of the talking than the interviewee. Thankfully, this doesn't happen often.

Ultimately, it is a good collection of opinions and war stories which will broaden your perspective towards code and people who write it.

Coders at Work is organized into several interviews with prominent computer scientists, engineers, programmers and hackers (each seeing himself differently as regards to belonging in one of these categories).

Most of these masterminds started programming on punchcards on PDP-I machines in Assembler, running software on timeshares and debugging both software and hardware. Most of them have worked with LISP, almost all of them feel that there is something wrong with C++, some contributed on creating or improving programming languages like Javascript, Java, Smalltalk, Haskell, Erlang, Fortran and LISP, one of them developed the original UNIX implementation, another contributed on writing the software for the first ARPANET nodes which later grew into what we know today as the Internet and a few others have written cool software like the Netscape Navigator, Livejournal and memcached. One notable interview is with Donald Knuth, the author of the multi-volume work "The Art of Computer Programming" who is though of as the father of algorithm analysis and who invented "literate programming".

After reading this book I found myself wanting to learn more about systems programming and while I probably will always work in application programming, I now have a new found respect for the hard work that these scientists and hackers have put throughout their life-long careers.

This book is a must read for any passionate programmer who is interested about the history and the early developments made in the software industry, developments that made today's technologies possible!

In Peter Seibel's "Coders At Work", Donald Knuth tells him "... so to me reading source materials is great enrichment for my own life and creativity". And Peter Seibel goes to the source materials, to many of the best coders of our time to discover nuggets on the craft of programming. Now interviews of great practitioners generally don't come off well--the quality of the interview is limited by the knowledge of the interviewer. Not so in this case, as Peter is both a life-long programmer and long-time journalist. Thus, he knows which questions to ask and leads the conversation down a fruitful path. A mixture of thoughtful answers to questions like "Do you use TDD" and "What sort of IDE do you use", and "what about C pointers" will give you fresh insights to things you thought you understood. The coders that were selected for the book include Donald Knuth (the IDE he used for TeX was pencil and paper), Ken Thompson, Fran Allen, Guy Steel (who seems to have used every programming language known, and is an authority on several)--a total of 15 of the best coders.

And there are war stories. What was it like building Netscape or Ghostscript or Javascript? How did you scale? What led to the need for memcached? What led to Erlang? Haskell?

And questions about live topics of today: What do you really think about C++? Shouldn't we be proving our programs correct? Should code be documented? What is Joe's law of debugging? Who has NOT read "Worse is Better"? Some of the answers might surprise and enlighten you.

I found it impossible to put this book down. It might affect your productivity for a couple of days, but I think you will think about programming a little differently.

I strongly recommend this book for programmers and people who have programmers in their life.

*Spoiler*: The last bit of the last sentence of the last interview in this book is "don't only read the people who code like you."

At least one reviewer has complained that this title didn't "detail" how these programmers worked and how they approached programming. I must thoroughly disagree. The opinions of these people on common points of disagreement from type systems to tools and coding styles to debugging methods was explored. If you are hoping that you will be able to watch the subjects solve a complex problem or go through a typical day's work than you are in the wrong place. This isn't a screencast or a tutorial. On the other hand, there are a wide variety of opinions on display from experts in different areas of the field across different generations on numerous contentious issues.

This book is filled with words worth chewing on. On the first read, the interviews of Crockford, Deutsch, Eich, and Peyton-Jones stuck out to me in particular. In subsequent readings I expect that set to be different. All of the interviewees did agree on the importance of one thing, reading and writing code. For a beginner, this book is likely to point out some pitfalls that otherwise would've been missed and suggests valuable sources of intuition and insight. Perhaps most importantly, it may help popularize some knowledge of the history of our field. As Knuth laments, "The idea that people knew a thing or two in the '70s is strange to a lot of young programmers." There is some valuable distilled experience and wisdom here. At the very least, the book should help you hash over your own opinions on the issues discussed.

This book is just a bunch of interviews with some programmers you might recognize and some you may not. It seems to be pretty lightly edited and some people may find some sections boring (and others may not)! "Coders at Work" is a fascinating insight into the education, careers and minds of some pretty big names in the field. I ordered the book before reading some of the negative reviews and I'm very glad I did. I almost hesitated to start reading it thinking that it was going to be boring and dry but it wasn't. Yes, there is definitely heavy use of acronyms and terms that I wasn't familiar with but to me it was a learning opportunity and a chance to dig a little deeper to figure out what the interviewees were talking about.

It's tough to predict if this book will appeal to you. If you're a seasoned software industry professional with a deep love for the 'craft' of coding then you'll love this collection if interviews. I certainly did and it reminded me of why I got into this industry in the first place and it rekindled a love for coding.

I always enjoy reading books about other programmers, and this book is the best of that kind that I have found. Reading about the techniques that other coders use and the programs they have created always inspires me to work harder and try and become a better programmer myself. The interviews in this book provide a great insight to many of the programmers that I have long admired.

Coders at Work benefits heavily from Peter Seibel's own experience programming, and his familiarity really helps drive the conversation in direction that true coders will appreciate. If you view programming as more than just a day job and are looking for ways to improve your craft, or just inspiration from hearing the tasks that others have been able to accomplish this is a great read.

As advertised, this is nothing more or less than a book full of interviews with accomplished programmers and computer scientists, interviews conducted by someone who is also a thoughtful and experienced programmer. The downside of the book is that it has absolutely horrible design: the text is ugly, the paper is ugly, there are typos on almost every page, and that is really irritating. There is also nothing here to draw you in to the material if you aren't already interested, but if you're thinking about buying a book of conversations with computer programmers that's probably not an issue.

The upside is that the interviews are often really fascinating. Siebel does a good job; he has a set of stock questions that everyone gets asked, and seeing how different people respond to them is great, but he also does a good job of getting the interviewees talking about things they think are interesting and just letting them talk. Contrasting how different people tackle problems, listening to what these folks think are the big issues in programming today and seeing common threads; there's a lot of good stuff. It's worth reading. I'm giving it three stars because I don't think it's a book that will be worth reading a second time, and because it's so sloppily put together.

The programmers interviewed in this book seem to range from guys in their early-30s to the elder statesmen of the programming world who hark back to the days of huge, basement-filling machines and programming-by-punchcards.

It's great reading if you are interested in the history of the profession and craft. There is plenty of debate about how important mathematical knowledge is or isn't to programmers and how the overall programming landscape - and the resulting demands on programmers - are changing, just to touch on one or two of the themes.

Apart from anything else, this has inspired me to hunt down and read some of the other books referenced within the interviews. I highly recommend this for anyone who wants an insight into how others enter this sector and how they approach problems once within it.

I really enjoyed this book. Each of the interviees had an interesting tale to tell and the questions Siebel asks are well targeted to bring these out. While not an overly technical book there is enough depth here to give an insight into how different the programming process is for different people and how their approaches differ.

While there are some interesting lessons to learn from these experiences, this is not a book about learning programming skills but about the history,thoughts and motivations of programmers who have demonstrated their ability through the significant projects they have been involved in.

The interviews seemed about the right length to me and I found this format made it a good book to dip into occasionally, partly to ration it out otherwise I'd have read it all in one go!

Highly recommended.

Die Interviews sind von spätestens 2009 und zahlreiche Themen sind für mich unverständlich, dennoch liest sich das Buch für einen Entwickler wie Prosa, macht richtig Spaß und ist sehr inspirierend.

Ich kann es nur empfehlen. Die Interviews sind abwechslungsreich und sehr gut geführt und man lernt durchauch auch von der jahrzehntelangen Erfahrung der "alten Hasen".

Für Entwickler eine unbedingte Leseempfehlung.

I have read most of this book, and I must say: it's been a great and sometimes enlightening read. The programmers covered in this book have a wide range of opinions about programming languages, design strategies, code reading, testing, etc., and it's given me insights into aspects of software development that perhaps I could improve upon.

Now, this book does not give specific code examples or anything like that; this is a book literally of 15 interviews. It is a book "about" programming and how different people perceive it.

I'd strongly recommend seeing Peter Seibel's Authors@Google talk on YouTube. That video is actually what made me decide to purchase this book. Definitely check it out.

Awesome book really enjoying reading it at the moment.. I would recommend this book to anyone in the computer science field o anyone interested how the great minds of the I. T WORLD STARTED OUT