As a former tech reporter myself, and--full disclosure--a friend of the author, I'm predisposed to like this book. However, even were I not, Coders resonates as a necessary book for our current moment.
At no other time in recent history has software and the people who make it been more critical to how we experience the world. Thanks to the current "pics or it didn't happen" mentality, Thompson's talent at digging into the personalities and the quirks of the mostly men (and the few women) who write the code that we rely on to stay in touch with loved ones, share experiences, shop, consume media, etc., should make readers to think about how the foundations of so much of daily life are produced.
He deftly exhumes the history of the software industry from its early days when coding was considered secretarial labor (and thus left to the ladies) to today's more male-dominated environment, where software bros chase the big score. He asks the right questions: Why did this happen and what was the effect of that shift? What are the knock-on impacts when coders are overwhelmingly white (or Asian), male, and convinced of their own overweening intelligence? Is the current, toxic environment found online solely because humans can be pretty awful to one another? Or is it because the guys who coded the platform just didn't think about online abuse because they never had to? Did that ignorance lead them to unwittingly enable the abuse, fake news, and mob culture we now have to endure? Thompson convincingly argues that a fair amount of that ignorance is at fault.
Ultimately, code doesn't just happen; humans with their weirdo attitudes, biases, ideologies, and faults write it, and they tend to encode into the code itself those very same attitudes, biases, ideologies, and faults -- whether they mean to or not. That's why it's important to understand the history of coders and the code they write. Given how important software is to the modern world -- a glitch at one airport can disrupt airline traffic all over the world, just to name one recent example -- we also have to know who the authors are.
Thompson's book does that, and with a verve, style, and brisk pace that makes Coders a readable, engaging, and valuable addition to this field of study.
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About the author
A clear-eyed, contemporary history of those who write the software that's eating the world
Love this book - I manage a team of software developers and bought a copy for everyone so that the spirit and diversity celebrated in this book can inform how we all think about who we are, who we can be, in this crazy industry we work in. "Coders" will be the definitive history of the early days of digital tech, and yes, we are decidedly still in the early days.Clive is a master story teller who brings his unique energy to every side of the story -- and with "Coders" some sides never really seen before. With a modern history of software developers that breaks from the common narrative of the lone dude hero nerd (or, at most, two dudes with the same first name, a'la Woz and Jobs or Carmack and Romero), Clive explains how we got here (2019), in not only in the big picture transformations from punch card programming to the phreaks and geeks era, but also from 2010 to 2019. What's changed since the days where it seemed like services like Facebook and Twitter were once keys to unlocking democracy, to today where calls to dismantle or legislate "Big Tech" dominate the headlines? A lack of product foresight, perhaps; follow the money, as usual. Thompson traces the threads through this still evolving history in a detailed, rigorous, but classically Clive-ian fun fashion. And while the exuberant optimism of "Smarter Than You Think" (Thompson's earlier book) is strongly tempered in "Coders" with today's troll filled, robo-clicked, blackbox algorithm concerns, Clive still manages to point ahead, with people and policies and tech that could lead to a hopefully brighter future.
Top reviews from the United States
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Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2019
Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2019
Clive is a master story teller who brings his unique energy to every side of the story -- and with "Coders" some sides never really seen before. With a modern history of software developers that breaks from the common narrative of the lone dude hero nerd (or, at most, two dudes with the same first name, a'la Woz and Jobs or Carmack and Romero), Clive explains how we got here (2019), in not only in the big picture transformations from punch card programming to the phreaks and geeks era, but also from 2010 to 2019. What's changed since the days where it seemed like services like Facebook and Twitter were once keys to unlocking democracy, to today where calls to dismantle or legislate "Big Tech" dominate the headlines? A lack of product foresight, perhaps; follow the money, as usual. Thompson traces the threads through this still evolving history in a detailed, rigorous, but classically Clive-ian fun fashion. And while the exuberant optimism of "Smarter Than You Think" (Thompson's earlier book) is strongly tempered in "Coders" with today's troll filled, robo-clicked, blackbox algorithm concerns, Clive still manages to point ahead, with people and policies and tech that could lead to a hopefully brighter future.
A clear-eyed, contemporary history of those who write the software that's eating the world
Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2019
Love this book - I manage a team of software developers and bought a copy for everyone so that the spirit and diversity celebrated in this book can inform how we all think about who we are, who we can be, in this crazy industry we work in. "Coders" will be the definitive history of the early days of digital tech, and yes, we are decidedly still in the early days.Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2019
Clive is a master story teller who brings his unique energy to every side of the story -- and with "Coders" some sides never really seen before. With a modern history of software developers that breaks from the common narrative of the lone dude hero nerd (or, at most, two dudes with the same first name, a'la Woz and Jobs or Carmack and Romero), Clive explains how we got here (2019), in not only in the big picture transformations from punch card programming to the phreaks and geeks era, but also from 2010 to 2019. What's changed since the days where it seemed like services like Facebook and Twitter were once keys to unlocking democracy, to today where calls to dismantle or legislate "Big Tech" dominate the headlines? A lack of product foresight, perhaps; follow the money, as usual. Thompson traces the threads through this still evolving history in a detailed, rigorous, but classically Clive-ian fun fashion. And while the exuberant optimism of "Smarter Than You Think" (Thompson's earlier book) is strongly tempered in "Coders" with today's troll filled, robo-clicked, blackbox algorithm concerns, Clive still manages to point ahead, with people and policies and tech that could lead to a hopefully brighter future.
Images in this review
Reviewed in the United States on March 28, 2019
Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2019
Top reviews from other countries
frederic
Stopped coding for a few hours of reading about it
Reviewed in Canada on April 28, 2019
