Confessions of a Necromancer

by Pieter Hintjens

Thirty-five years I've written code, a necromancer weaving spells to bring the dead to life. Hardware and electronics never held any charm for me. I've no love for chips and cables and solder. Give me a keyboard, a screen, and a language, and you have my attention. Thirty-five years produced a lot of work. So I thought, maybe time to talk about some of those projects.

Genres: Nonfiction, Programming, Biography

225 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 1, 2016

About the author

a software developer and past president of the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure (FFII), an association that fights against software patents. In 2007, he was nominated one of the "50 most influential people in IP" by Managing Intellectual Property magazine.

Reviews

[Yiorgos Adamopoulos · Rating 5 out of 5]

I knew of Hintjens's work (Xitami, ZeroMQ, etc) but not much more of him. The book popped up in a Slack I am a member of while discussing Torvalds's decision to take a step back and work on himself.

Hintjens writes a technical memoir. At least that is the first part of the book. And because he writes stuff about the era of computing I grew up into, I like it. He reminded me of technologies, tricks and methods I had long forgotten. I even learned new old stuff that I had never come across.

And the there is the second part of the book. The most important and most interesting one. What can I say about it? Not much I am afraid. I can only declare my respect for his effort to document the process and his voyage towards the end. I envy his clarity, even though I cannot even begin to imagine the cost for it to be maintained during the cancer treatment process.

Highly touching.

[Michael Dubakov · Rating 4 out of 5]

Своеобразная книга. Смесь автобиографии, заметок о жизни, публичных выступлениях, разработке ПО, и смерти.

Местами книга грустная, но оставляет позитивное ощущение и желание жить. Из полезного:
1. Попробовать выступление без слайдов и говорить медленнее
2. Научиться технике управления эмоциями (у него в книге она описана под термином Grounding). Смысл в персонализации эмоции и внутренний диалог с ней. Звучит интересно.
3. Писать заметки чаще (в идеале — каждый день)

The only way to beat cancer, really, is to die from something else first.

[Jindřich Mynarz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Somewhere I read Pieter Hintjens being called a "moral giant" and, indeed, his practical ethics of kindness in (open-source) communities supports this. I also enjoyed his down-to-earth approach to development, much distant to the buzzword-laden and over-excited accounts on being a developer these days. What a man. What a legacy.

[Peter Aronson · Rating 4 out of 5]

An disparate mix taken from the author's blog. The first part is his history in programming, which is good, and the third part is the story of his death, which is good and moving. The middle is a bunch of ten point lists which are rather ... mixed in quality and usefulness. I recommend the first and last third. The middle is mostly statements of opinion without much to back them up.

[Michał Wołodkiewicz · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is not strictly technical book. I am a programmer and it brought me to reflection about my career - so I can say it was worth reading.

[Manuel Laphroaig · Rating 5 out of 5]

I love reading about other programmers, Hintjens was an incredible programmer and his thoughts on the craft are indispensible.

[Baldur · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent book. I love how Pieter wrote down lesson for each chapter.

[Aija · Rating 3 out of 5]

The first and last essays interesting and worth reading, those in the middle not so much (though some still might find these interesting).

[Kamil · Rating 5 out of 5]

Very interesting view on life

Software developer, thinker and writer shares his views on life, software and dying. A bit of laugh, a bit of cry and a lot to think about.

[Federico · Rating 5 out of 5]

A really interesting collection of lessons learned in a life spent building software and communities, and a stunning report from the trenches of terminal sickness...