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.