Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World by Clive Thompson. Clive writes for the New York Times Magazine, Wired, and The Smithsonian. This book is in fact, a very comprehensive review of computer programming.
In addition to tracing historical developments, Clive is addressing the origins of computer programming, artificial intelligence, and college computer science programs, and concludes with new coding companies that have entered the market including the Flatiron School.
However, Clive provides an honest and deep analysis about how programmers live, including the evolving demands required to succeed long term. Coding is not an easy career choice.
For this reason, it is challenging for women and minorities to land full time coder jobs. At the same time, everyone not attending a handful of elite universities to study computer engineering (Stanford, MIT, or Harvard) career opportunities at top flight companies remain challenging.
Yet for today’s gig economy worker, this book is an especially worthy read. Parents working will gain a better understanding of potential career paths for their children. Above all, if you have a daughter, Coders is mandatory reading. While his opening chapters reinforced the key role woman held in the launch of computing machines, it is now an uphill battle.
The Software Update That Changed Reality
Clive begins Chapter 1 The Software Update That Changed Reality with Facebook’s Ruchi Sanghvi authoring their initial newsfeed feature. There is a good view of how Ruchi faced challenges as a woman at Facebook. She then left to start Cove, later acquired by Dropbox.
Many will also appreciate the origin of ‘Hello World’ and to learn exactly what is a “bug” in software and the precision required that makes software execute flawlessly. This is a good chapter for any non-programmer parent.
The Four Waves of Coders
Chapter 2 The Four Waves of Coders introduces Mary Allen Wilkes and her absolutely in fact, amazing work based upon understanding logic. In addition, Mary is very good success story for young girls to learn. This is certainly refreshing in comparison to the endless books about Gates, Zukerburg, Ellison, Page, Brin, Ballmer or ANY other male billionaire. Clive also documents the shifting roles of women and men in the software industry. Clive later addresses rather offensive quotes from programmers indicating women are genetically unable to code and therefore are better off staying at home.
One interesting observation by Clive is that many of the abuses we now understand by privacy flaws comes from talented programmers who excel at mathematics yet lack strong humanities education. While he also shows how elite colleges have now established the requirement for perfect testing for admittance, Stanford will not expand classrooms to bring more students into their noted program.
There is without a doubt another elite, white male dominated market. Armed with computer science degrees from elite schools they program social media tools with almost no safeguards.
Human errors in AI
Clive does not hide the role of programmers creating artificial intelligence tools that have rather human traits engrained to their elite schooling. When Google introduced their autotagging feature in Photos:
Alciné scrolled over to a picture of himself and a friend, in a selfie they’d taken at an outdoor concert: She looms close in the view, while he’s peering, smiling, over her right shoulder. Alciné is African American, and so is his friend. And the label that Google Photos had generated? “Gorillas.” It wasn’t just that single photo, either. Over fifty snapshots of the two from that day had been identified as “gorillas.
p. 353
Upon one of the oldest, vilest racial epithets, “something that black people have been called for centuries,” Of all derogatory terms to use, that one came up.” Google apologized for the error and a spokesperson said they were “appalled” at the performance of their AI.
p. 354
This speaks volumes to the fact, as Clive outlines that humans construct the code for artificial intelligence systems. They code their own flaws, bias, and racism. This is also brought out in Cathy O’Neil‘s excellent book Weapons of Math Destruction.
The ENIAC Girls Vanish
The author does a good analysis on how a cultural shift developed. Chapter 7 The ENIAC Girls Vanish is addressing gender discrimination, both sexual harassment, cyberbullying, and diversity problems across the software industry. Clive reminds us that Ada Lovelace, daughter of Lord Byron, wrote code for Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine in 1842. Therefore modern stereotypes that woman and minorities can only be front-end coders is complete nonsense.
Blue-collar coding
Coders closes with Chapter 11’s Blue-collar coding the reveals a modern approach to programming needs for both young students and older adults looking for a career change. It is fair to suggest that neither group will get into Stanford, so the market is carving out an opportunity — with no clear expectation that the next Gates, Zukerburg, Ellison, Page, Brin, Ballmer is guaranteed. At the same time, Clive shares that a formal degree is not needed to do specific types of programming. The gig economy is certainly driving this demand.
In conclusion, Coders is an honest and cold look at the software industry. One of the best computer industry books I have read in a long time. If you are considering a job in programming or looking out for a young child’s career options, then by all means necessary read this book.
GoodBooksRadio | Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World
BookNet_Canada | Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World
Talk Cocktail | Why Coders Matter and Why They Control Our Future
Open Data Science | The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World
Andrew Keen | Can Coders Save Democracy
Accessible Media Inc. | Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World
Commonwealth Club of California | How Tech Remade The World