Masterminds of Programming: Conversations with the Creators of Major Programming Languages (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly)) [Paperback]

Federico Biancuzzi (Author), Chromatic (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: April 3, 2009 | Series: Theory in Practice (O'Reilly)

Masterminds of Programming features exclusive interviews with the creators of several historic and highly influential programming languages. In this unique collection, you'll learn about the processes that led to specific design decisions, including the goals they had in mind, the trade-offs they had to make, and how their experiences have left an impact on programming today. Masterminds of Programming includes individual interviews with:

• Adin D. Falkoff: APL
• Thomas E. Kurtz: BASIC
• Charles H. Moore: FORTH
• Robin Milner: ML
• Donald D. Chamberlin: SQL
• Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan: AWK
• Charles Geschke and John Warnock: PostScript
• Bjarne Stroustrup: C++
• Bertrand Meyer: Eiffel
• Brad Cox and Tom Love: Objective-C
• Larry Wall: Perl
• Simon Peyton Jones, Paul Hudak, Philip Wadler, and John Hughes: Haskell
• Guido van Rossum: Python
• Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo and Roberto Ierusalimschy: Lua
• James Gosling: Java
• Grady Booch, Ivar Jacobson, and James Rumbaugh: UML
• Anders Hejlsberg: Delphi inventor and lead developer of C#

If you're interested in the people whose vision and hard work helped shape the computer industry, you'll find Masterminds of Programming fascinating.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Federico Biancuzzi is a freelance interviewer. His interviews appeared on publications such as ONLamp.com, LinuxDevCenter.com, SecurityFocus.com, NewsForge.com, Linux.com, TheRegister.co.uk, ArsTechnica.com, the Polish print magazine BSD Magazine, and the Italian print magazine Linux&C.

Shane Warden manages Onyx Neon Press, an independent publisher. His areas of expertise include agile software development, language design, and virtual machines for dynamic languages. He is also a published novelist. His books include The Art of Agile Development and Masterminds of Programming.

Product Details

• Paperback: 496 pages
• Publisher: O'Reilly Media; 1 edition (April 3, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0596515170
• ISBN-13: 978-0596515171
• Product Dimensions: 6 x 1.1 x 9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (17 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #271,047 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #26 in Books > Computers & Technology > Programming > Software Design, Testing & Engineering > UML

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

91 of 99 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Unintentionally hilarious April 24, 2009

By Cody Koeninger

Format:Paperback

Most of these "masterminds" come across as rather provincial, making for an unintentionally hilarious read. Stroustrup can't go much more than a page without complaining about Java. The creator of basic opines that, because all languages are basically the same, if you've learned one you can easily learn any . . . then later talks about how he is trying (and failing) to learn objective-C. Guido van rossum asserts that you can define reduce in a couple of lines of python, which you simply cannot do in a functional language. Huh?

reduce f z [] = z
reduce f z (x:xs) = reduce f (f z x) xs

Or is haskell not a functional language in his book, just like lisp is not a functional language?

Don't get me wrong, a few of the interviews are worth reading for something other than comedic value. When creators are actually willing to talk about the mistakes and tradeoffs they made, as the team behind Awk does, the results are sometimes illuminating. The interview with charles moore is completely insane, in a good way. Adin falkoff's comments on apl are interesting, and he does a good job of taking the high road when the interviewer attempts to provoke comparisons to other languages. Unfortunately the overall tone of the book drags it down to not much more than an amusing light read - good for a plane ride, but not worth coming back to.

21 of 23 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An educational AND entertaining read May 4, 2009

By Brian Peek

Format:Paperback

I've been reading this book off and on for the past week and I have to say I'm really enjoying it. It's great to get perspectives from the creators of a variety of programming languages and learn why they made the choices they did, good or bad.

As one of the other reviewers posted here, there are some unintentional funny moments when creators of one language criticize another and aren't exactly correct in their comments. Personally, I think that adds to the entertainment value of the book and shows that we're all human.

If you're looking for a strict textbook on programming languages, this isn't exactly what you're looking for. But if you'd like to glean some insight on 17 different programming languages, their creators, and their reasoning and opinions on what they and others have done, this is an entertaining and informative read.

10 of 11 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Where's Wirth? October 14, 2010

By Stefan Vorkoetter

Format:Kindle Edition

I've read the table of contents, and am part way through the book, but I can't see how a book of interviews with designers of influential programming languages can be considered complete without interviewing Niklaus Wirth. Pascal, Modula-2, and to a lesser extent, Oberon, have all greatly influenced the design of most (not all) of the programming languages discussed in this book.