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Programmers at work: Interviews
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383 pages, Paperback
First published June 26, 1986
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Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews
March 22, 2016
Programmers at Work by Susan Lammers is an excellent snapshot into the workings of minds that helped shape the early computer industry. These tech pioneers share their thoughts and musings on a wide range of topics.
While the book is a little dated in terms of technology, there are bits of wisdom, ideas, timeless concepts and entertaining stories scattered throughout that are worthwhile to any student of computer history or computer programming. Some sections are dry and drag on for too long but it held my interest for the most part.
It was particularly entertaining to be able to compare how close these programmer's predictions about the future have come to our current reality. Some predictions aren't quite correct but some are spot on and way ahead of their time. One standout example is when Jaron Lanier is describing to the interviewer what we now know as virtual reality and augmented reality.
This book isn't for every reader but if your interests fall into this particular vein of knowledge, you won't regret reading this book for the insights it offers into tech history, creativity and the spirit of technological innovation. I would love to see a publisher come up with a new series of books similar to this one that feature today's top programmers and technological prophets.
While the book is a little dated in terms of technology, there are bits of wisdom, ideas, timeless concepts and entertaining stories scattered throughout that are worthwhile to any student of computer history or computer programming. Some sections are dry and drag on for too long but it held my interest for the most part.
It was particularly entertaining to be able to compare how close these programmer's predictions about the future have come to our current reality. Some predictions aren't quite correct but some are spot on and way ahead of their time. One standout example is when Jaron Lanier is describing to the interviewer what we now know as virtual reality and augmented reality.
This book isn't for every reader but if your interests fall into this particular vein of knowledge, you won't regret reading this book for the insights it offers into tech history, creativity and the spirit of technological innovation. I would love to see a publisher come up with a new series of books similar to this one that feature today's top programmers and technological prophets.
Read
December 28, 2021Collection of interviews with famous programmers back in 80s. Tremendous change in computers/programming since then, yet fun and interesting to read how programming was at the end of 80s. Predictions on the future of computing (e.g. compact disc, whether we will use computers anything besides word processing and spreadsheet).
The list of programmers interviewed is given below. It is interesting to take a look at the links to see what they are doing now.
- Charles Simonyi
- Butler Lampson
- John Warnock
- Gary Kildall
- Bill Gates
- John Page
- Wayne Ratliff
- Dan Bricklin
- Bob Frankston
- Jonathan Sachs
- Ray Ozzie
- Peter Roizen
- Bob Carr
- Jef Raskin
- Andy Hertzfeld
- Tori Iwatani
- Scott Kim
- Jason Lanier
- Michael Hawdey
The list of programmers interviewed is given below. It is interesting to take a look at the links to see what they are doing now.
- Charles Simonyi
- Butler Lampson
- John Warnock
- Gary Kildall
- Bill Gates
- John Page
- Wayne Ratliff
- Dan Bricklin
- Bob Frankston
- Jonathan Sachs
- Ray Ozzie
- Peter Roizen
- Bob Carr
- Jef Raskin
- Andy Hertzfeld
- Tori Iwatani
- Scott Kim
- Jason Lanier
- Michael Hawdey
September 17, 2022
Programmers at Work : Interviews with 19 Programmers Who Shaped the Computer Industry (1986) by Susan Lammers is a fascinating series of interviews with various programmers and people in the tech industry.
An electronic copy of the book can be borrowed for free from the Internet Archive. There is also a wordpress site that has all the interviews that was created by Susan Lammers herself.
The people interviewed are Charles Simonyi, Butler Lampson, John Warnock, Gary Kildall, Bill Gates, John Page, Wayne Ratliff, Dan Bricklin, Bob Frankston, Jonathan Sachs, Ray Ozzie, Peter Roizen, Bob Carr, Jef Raskin, Andy Hertzfeld, Tori Iwatani, Scott Kim, Jaron Janier and Michael Hawley. With one exception each person now has a wikipedia page.
Today ‘Programmers at Work’ might be a podcast or a Youtube interview series due to the work of all the people interviewed and thousands of others in creating today’s incredible world of the internet. But in 1986 a book was the way to document these things.
The interviews are very interesting. Most of the subjects talk about how their code and when they get their best coding done and what kinds of teams work well. The one or two pizza team is mentioned in the book.
As for predictions, there are some great ones. Gary Kildall points out that the hard drive is one of the few mechanical parts left in a computer and suggests that it will be replaced. Remarkably this happened but after Kildall’s unfortunately early death in 1994. Michael Hawley talks about the ‘Pixar’ computer and what was happening at ILM.
A number of the interviewees talk about the impact that CD-ROM is going to have. Bill Gates mentions it and just passes over how great Microsoft’s internal email service is. He was so close to seeing what an impact the internet would have. It’s surprising how little thought is given to what was coming. Also scant mention is made of mobile phones and how they could be combined with increasing computing power and what sort of impact that would have.
Programmers at Work really is a gem of a book that documents how the technology world was in the mid-1980s. For anyone interested in the history of computing it’s definitely worth a read.
An electronic copy of the book can be borrowed for free from the Internet Archive. There is also a wordpress site that has all the interviews that was created by Susan Lammers herself.
The people interviewed are Charles Simonyi, Butler Lampson, John Warnock, Gary Kildall, Bill Gates, John Page, Wayne Ratliff, Dan Bricklin, Bob Frankston, Jonathan Sachs, Ray Ozzie, Peter Roizen, Bob Carr, Jef Raskin, Andy Hertzfeld, Tori Iwatani, Scott Kim, Jaron Janier and Michael Hawley. With one exception each person now has a wikipedia page.
Today ‘Programmers at Work’ might be a podcast or a Youtube interview series due to the work of all the people interviewed and thousands of others in creating today’s incredible world of the internet. But in 1986 a book was the way to document these things.
The interviews are very interesting. Most of the subjects talk about how their code and when they get their best coding done and what kinds of teams work well. The one or two pizza team is mentioned in the book.
As for predictions, there are some great ones. Gary Kildall points out that the hard drive is one of the few mechanical parts left in a computer and suggests that it will be replaced. Remarkably this happened but after Kildall’s unfortunately early death in 1994. Michael Hawley talks about the ‘Pixar’ computer and what was happening at ILM.
A number of the interviewees talk about the impact that CD-ROM is going to have. Bill Gates mentions it and just passes over how great Microsoft’s internal email service is. He was so close to seeing what an impact the internet would have. It’s surprising how little thought is given to what was coming. Also scant mention is made of mobile phones and how they could be combined with increasing computing power and what sort of impact that would have.
Programmers at Work really is a gem of a book that documents how the technology world was in the mid-1980s. For anyone interested in the history of computing it’s definitely worth a read.
December 20, 2022
She goes around asking some of the earliest programmers about their craft.
Apart from specific questions tailored to each person, she asks some common questions such as:
Is it a skill or an art?
Which programmers do you admire?
Did you originally plan to get into programming?
What do you think of artificial intelligence?
Do you have any code snippets or sketches that exemplify your approach?
Why is programming so obsessive?
What are the things you do apart from programming? A lot of programmers fly planes, apparently.
Good read!
Apart from specific questions tailored to each person, she asks some common questions such as:
Is it a skill or an art?
Which programmers do you admire?
Did you originally plan to get into programming?
What do you think of artificial intelligence?
Do you have any code snippets or sketches that exemplify your approach?
Why is programming so obsessive?
What are the things you do apart from programming? A lot of programmers fly planes, apparently.
Good read!
Read
October 8, 2022respectable disciplines, require that you think clearly to succeed in them. That's why many successful computer people come from these fields.
Most business people operate a spreadsheet and that's programming in some sense.
University, creating a student-registration system
A lot of people design an algorithm and thendesign the system aroundthat algorithm. Good systems design is much more of an engineering activity; it’s a set of trade-offs and balances among various systems’ components. I think the most difficult part of systems design is knowing howto makethosetrade-offs andbalances among the various components.
A fairly standard rule is that if you want to keep something simple, thenthe organization that develops it has to be simple.
INTERVIEWER: What happens when little companies grow up into huge corporations?
WARNOCK:The trick is to learnfrom the Hewlett-Packard approach: Keep it as twenty different, small companies. Keep breaking it up and never let it become a huge organisation.
INTERVIEWER: What about the first professional program you wrote?
KILDALL: I wrote it at the navigation school my father owned. We used to prepare tide tables by hand for one of the local publishing companies in Seattle. I wrote a FORTRAN program that calculated the tides. It was the first program I made money on--$500 or so.
when you're writing compilers, the first thing you write is a scanner, which is a little tool you use a lot.
People go to doctors for many reasons. Some are psychological. But sometimes they only want medical information. It costs a lot to go to the doctor, and if people had less expensive ways to access that data, they would.
Most business people operate a spreadsheet and that's programming in some sense.
University, creating a student-registration system
A lot of people design an algorithm and thendesign the system aroundthat algorithm. Good systems design is much more of an engineering activity; it’s a set of trade-offs and balances among various systems’ components. I think the most difficult part of systems design is knowing howto makethosetrade-offs andbalances among the various components.
A fairly standard rule is that if you want to keep something simple, thenthe organization that develops it has to be simple.
INTERVIEWER: What happens when little companies grow up into huge corporations?
WARNOCK:The trick is to learnfrom the Hewlett-Packard approach: Keep it as twenty different, small companies. Keep breaking it up and never let it become a huge organisation.
INTERVIEWER: What about the first professional program you wrote?
KILDALL: I wrote it at the navigation school my father owned. We used to prepare tide tables by hand for one of the local publishing companies in Seattle. I wrote a FORTRAN program that calculated the tides. It was the first program I made money on--$500 or so.
when you're writing compilers, the first thing you write is a scanner, which is a little tool you use a lot.
People go to doctors for many reasons. Some are psychological. But sometimes they only want medical information. It costs a lot to go to the doctor, and if people had less expensive ways to access that data, they would.
September 7, 2021
The interviewer-author of the book talked with 19 important persons in "personal computer"-related Software engineering circa 1985, asking them similar questions. Some of them are active programmers, some (like Charles Simonyi) are more software managers, some (like Bill Gates) are top managers.
It's quite an interesting read as you realize that a lot of things has not changed, like AI hype. In a form of, expert systems the hype was near its peak. Majority of the interviewees are rather skeptical about it, but some (including Gates) are very upbeat.
One of the founders of "virtual reality" - Jaron Lanier- promised to deliver it "very soon"
It was also interesting reading that Gates believed that he can maintain a team of 160 programmers at Microsoft for a long time :)
Also you can observe the change from people of 70s, obsessed with memory (I put something in 4K, 16K), etc. and people of 80s, thinking about OOP, readibility, etc.
It's quite an interesting read as you realize that a lot of things has not changed, like AI hype. In a form of, expert systems the hype was near its peak. Majority of the interviewees are rather skeptical about it, but some (including Gates) are very upbeat.
One of the founders of "virtual reality" - Jaron Lanier- promised to deliver it "very soon"
It was also interesting reading that Gates believed that he can maintain a team of 160 programmers at Microsoft for a long time :)
Also you can observe the change from people of 70s, obsessed with memory (I put something in 4K, 16K), etc. and people of 80s, thinking about OOP, readibility, etc.
July 16, 2018
This book had a huge impact on me in letting me see what *being* a programmer might entail. What the daily life and activity would be. And today I still draw on so many images implanted by this book.
November 8, 2019
I think the book is exceptional. As a professional programmer you can find a lot of inspiration reading the stories of some of the most influential Engineers that created the most awesome tools and programming languages used today.
November 9, 2021
Delightful! Some dry bits but such a privilege to hear from these people. Too bad no women represented.
August 11, 2016
When Susan Lammers wrote this book back in 1986, the interviews with the programmers within gave us some good insight into how these guys (sorry, no gals) thought, created, and executed their visions. Today, these interviews serve as a tapestry of the history of computing. It's still interesting to read about the early days of Microsoft with Bill Gates, to listen to Dan Bricklin (VisiCalc) about the genesis of the modern day spreadsheet, to understand the vision Mitch Kapor (Lotus 1-2-3) had about extending the ideas that VisiCalc started, as well as from the man who actually programmed Lotus 1-2-3 (Jonathan Sacks). You'll also read about the people behind Multics, dBase, CP/M, Digital Research, Adobe, the Apple II and Mac, etc. Again, it's the storytelling of the people involved that elevates this book, not necessarily the technology. A classic book with the passage of time.
December 27, 2024
My favorite interview is with Bill Gates. He has clearly thought philosophically and deeply about programming, how to practice, what makes a good programmer, etc. I read his interview a year ago and it fundamentally changed how I code. Now I'm more patient and spend lots of time thinking about algorithms and data structures before I start coding. Butler Lampson also has deep thoughts, but perhaps too deep for me to fully understand. Other good interviews are with John Page, John Warnock, and Gary Kildall.
Want to read
October 19, 2009Jeff Atwood of Coding Horrors recommended this right after declaring his love for "Coders at Work" which I thought was great.
August 9, 2013
Really inspiring, and good insights about how people are working, debugging, interacting with their surroundings.
Want to read
July 25, 2017not to be confused with "coders at work" or "founders at work"
August 22, 2012
Good book... Ranging from fun reading to truly inspiring
October 3, 2018
Unmatched insight into some of the people and programs that changed the world we live in forever.
Displaying 1 - 16 of 16 reviews