Facebook's algorithms shaping the news. Self-driving cars roaming
the streets. Revolution on Twitter and romance on Tinder. We live
in a world constructed of code--and coders are the ones who built
it for us. Programmers shape our everyday behavior: When they make
something easy to do, we do more of it. When they make it hard or
impossible, we do less of it. From acclaimed tech writer Clive
Thompson comes a brilliant anthropological reckoning with the most
powerful tribe in the world today, computer programmers, in a book
that interrogates who they are, how they think, what qualifies as
greatness in their world, and what should give us pause. In pop
culture and media, the people who create the code that rules our
world are regularly portrayed in hackneyed, simplified terms, as
ciphers in hoodies. Thompson goes far deeper, taking us close to
some of the great programmers of our time, including the creators
of Facebook's News Feed, Instagram, Google's cutting-edge AI, and
more. Speaking to everyone from revered "10X" elites to neophytes,
back-end engineers and front-end designers, Thompson explores the
distinctive psychology of this vocation--which combines a love of
logic, an obsession with efficiency, the joy of puzzle-solving, and
a superhuman tolerance for mind-bending frustration. Along the way,
Coders ponders the morality and politics of code, including its
implications for civic life and the economy and the major
controversies of our era. In accessible, erudite prose, Thompson
unpacks the surprising history of the field, beginning with the
first coders -- brilliant and pioneering women, who, despite
crafting some of the earliest personal computers and programming
languages, were later written out of history. At the same time, the
book deftly illustrates how programming has become a marvelous new
art form--a source of delight and creativity, not merely danger. To
get as close to his subject as possible, Thompson picks up the
thread of his own long-abandoned coding skills as he reckons, in
his signature, highly personal style, with what superb programming
looks like. To understand the world today, we need to understand
code and its consequences. With Coders, Thompson gives a definitive
look into the heart of the machine.
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