Programmers at work
by Susan M. Lammers · first published 1986
53% recommend42% neutral6% critical
Why HN recommends it
Mid-1980s interviews with 19 pioneers, including Gates and Pac-Man creator Iwatani, going into the often mundane details of the craft. Suits readers who want programming history and how early greats thought.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
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…- John Gernter, The Idea Factory - T.R. Reid, The Chip - Stephen Levy, Hackers - Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late - Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning - Susan Lammers, Programmers at Work (Actually I read Levy & Lammers a long time ago, but they're both better than SotNM too.) Those were full of themes like patents and broad use of technology, interaction between government and private…
on “Windows NT and VMS: The Rest of the Story (1998)” ↗…of the genre: The Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder. It's a single case study, but told in such loving detail as to be Pulitzer-worthy. Also, there's a lot of good primary source material in "Programmers At Work", by Susan Lammers.
on “Ask HN: Books on Computer History” ↗…Programming Environment Kernighan and Plauger, Software Tools in Pascal Donald Knuth, Literate Programming Glenn Krasner (editor), Smalltalk-80: Bits of History, Words of Advice Susan Lammers, Programmers at Work Wm Leler, Constraint Programming Languages Liskov and Guttag, Abstraction and Specification in Program Development Peter Norvig, Paradigms of Artificial Intelligence Programming Chris…
on “Which programming book you just couldn’t stop reading from start to end?” ↗Gates was an extremely talented programmer. There's a great chapter on him in "Programmers at Work" - http://www.amazon.com/Programmers-Work-Interviews-Computer-I... Joel Spolsky also mentions his talents in some of his old posts as well.
on “Could Bill Gates write code?” ↗…an 80s book with fantastic interviews of programmers before they became business leaders, check out the reviews: http://www.amazon.com/Programmers-Work-Interviews-Computer-I... & http://www.amazon.com/Programmers-at-Work-Susan-Lammers/dp/0... Some (all?) interviews free here: http://programmersatwork.wordpress.com/
on “Ask HN: Tips to become a great programmer” ↗…the interviews are pretty detailed, down to nitty-gritty, often mundane details about the craft of programming. http://www.amazon.com/Coders-Work-Reflections-Craft-Programm... http://www.amazon.com/Programmers-at-Work-Susan-Lammers/dp/0...
on “Ask HN: Inspiring software engineering carriers” ↗"Programmers At Work" by Susan Lammers was a great read in its time, and I keep referring to ideas from it. Might be worth a look. Peter Seibel's done a great job with continuing the idea, e.g. "Coders At Work", "Founders…
on “Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?” ↗There is also "Programmers at work", much older but also a great read from the 80s https://www.amazon.com/Programmers-work-Interviews-Susan-Lam...
on “Show HN: 14 Habits of Highly Productive Developers – New Book” ↗Programmers at Work, by Susan Lammers. It opened up many many ideas to me, including flying, writing software for people, why simple software is harder to write than complicated software, and gave me some indication of…
on “Ask YC: What would you put on a hacker's bookshelf?” ↗…http://www.amazon.com/Programming-Language-Pragmatics-Third-..., check out the overview and reviews. Coders at Work by Peter Seibel: By far the best of this type of book (well, not counting the '80s classic Programmers at Work which I haven't read since then), one of the best Lisp authors interviews in depth a lot of really interesting and/or important people, from James Zawinski to Donald Knuth, with Javascript, static FP…
on “Ask HN: Great programming books you read in 2009?” ↗In the same vein as Coders at Work is Programmers at Work by Susan Lammers: http://www.amazon.com/Programmers-Work-Interviews-Computer-I... The book is now out of print, but the author has a blog on which she is gradually posting all the old interviews and…
on “Ask HN: Any Books on Inspirational Computer Science Personalities ?” ↗Free online: Programmers at Work, by Susan Lammers (1986), https://programmersatwork.wordpress.com/about/ interviews the creators of dBase, PacMan, Postscript, Mac OS, DOS, Word, VisiCalc and more.
on “My Top 100 Programming, Computer and Science Books: Part One” ↗…guide to Gödel". Out of print but Amazon has used copies. Quantum Computing since Democritus by Scott Aaronson. Fun survey but requires some familiarity with P/NP, quantum mechanics, linear algebra. Programmers at Work by Susan Lammers. Interviews with computer pioneers. Interesting to see how they think and what they have in common. Time Management for System Administrators by Thomas Limoncelli. Short, easy read with…
on “Ask HN: Good business or technology book recommendations?” ↗Trying not to repeat others. Since you sound like you're interested in "learning from the past": - The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick Brooks - Programmers at Work by Susan Lammers - Apple Human Interface Guidelines: The Apple Desktop Interface - The Data Warehouse Toolkit by Ralph Kimball
on “Ask HN: How to learn about the history of computing?” ↗…work going forward. But I will say that the Paris Review Interviews are a treasure trove of insight into some of the most creative cultural minds we've had. To tie this back to tech, Susan Lammers' "Programmers at Work" interviews from the mid-1980s (consistently), and Jessica Livingston's "Founders at Work" (at its best) both bring this same kind of openness and honesty. I found Lammers' book to hold up better, perhaps…
on “E. L. Doctorow, the Art of Fiction No. 94 (1986)” ↗