"Coders at Work" seems interesting, care to take us on tour Peter!!!

[Anket Dhulekar]

Though I have been programming from quite some time now, I still consider myself novice as a developer. At times I often wonder, what goes inside the minds of these great coders.

This seems like an interesting book. Its nice to go through a book once in a while, that's not purely technical ;)

Peter would like to add something more here! How did this book come about?

[Peter Seibel]

Well, the book exists because Apress, the publisher, had such good success with their book Founders at Work that they decided they wanted to do a follow-up. Gary Cornell, who founded Apress and who was my editor on Practical Common Lisp (my first book, also published by Apress) suggested that I do it since I'm a programmer who also has some background in journalism. (I was planning to be a journalist up until about a year after college.)

As for a tour of the book, your best bet is probably to look at http://www.codersatwork.com/. Click on the names of the interviewees and you can read the short introduction to each interviewee's chapter.

[Campbell Ritchie]

Oh, are you the same Seibel who wrote the LISP book? I have a copy somewhere.

[Leandro Coutinho]

Campbell Ritchie wrote:Oh, are you the same Seibel who wrote the LISP book? I have a copy somewhere.

Yes, he is. Pratical Common Lisp
What do you have to say about this book Campbell? Did you like it?

[Kavita Tipnis]

Yes it would be very interesting to read how these programmers found bugs and ran through code logic in their dreaming state
and woke up to implement that!

[Peter Seibel]

Kavita Tipnis wrote:Yes it would be very interesting to read how these programmers found bugs and ran through code logic in their dreaming state
and woke up to implement that!

I think only one interviewee actually told me about solving a problem in his sleep, but lots of them described various ways of letting a problem simmer for a while before a solution emerged.

[Kavita Tipnis]

Peter , it is great that you managed to interview one woman programmer.
Were there any dream programmers that you very trying to interview?

[Peter Seibel]

Kavita Tipnis wrote:Peter , it is great that you managed to interview one woman programmer.
Were there any dream programmers that you very trying to interview?

The two folks I tried pretty hard to get and never could were Linus Torvalds and John Carmack. Torvalds eventually replied to one of my messages and seemed, in theory, willing. But then when I tried to schedule an interview he stopped replying again. And Carmack I never heard back from, despite repeated attempts.

[John de Michele]

Peter:

Maybe your next book could be "Software Testers at Work" .

John.

[arulk pillai]

Good ranking in Amazon. Congrats. The promotion is working

[Amit kull]

Hi,
I came to know about this book from Joel's blog. When Joel recommends it, it is bound to be good.
Also Jeff @ coding horror says it is similar to Programmers at work. If it has even a couple of 'Nixon interviews' I would love to read it.
Hope to win this book.

[Leandro Coutinho]

Peter Seibel wrote:

Kavita Tipnis wrote:Peter , it is great that you managed to interview one woman programmer.
Were there any dream programmers that you very trying to interview?

The two folks I tried pretty hard to get and never could were Linus Torvalds and John Carmack. Torvalds eventually replied to one of my messages and seemed, in theory, willing. But then when I tried to schedule an interview he stopped replying again. And Carmack I never heard back from, despite repeated attempts.

It's a pity that they are not present. :cry: :cry:
I would like to know which high-level languages Torvalds recommends instead of C++.

Linus Torvalds wrote:
And if you want a fancier language, C++ is absolutely the worst one to
choose. If you want real high-level, pick one that has true high-level
features like garbage collection or a good system integration, rather than
something that lacks both the sparseness and straightforwardness of C,
*and* doesn't even have the high-level bindings to important concepts.

[arulk pillai]

Some of those who declined might have second thoughts after realizing how well the book has been recieved