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Masterminds of Programming: Conversations with the Creators of Major Programming Languages: Inspiring Conversations with Creators of Major Programming Languages (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly))
 
 
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Masterminds of Programming: Conversations with the Creators of Major Programming Languages: Inspiring Conversations with Creators of Major Programming Languages (Theory in Practice (O'Reilly)) [Kindle Edition]

Chromatic (Author), Federico Biancuzzi (Author)
3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews) |
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Product Description

Product Description

Masterminds of Programming features exclusive interviews with the creators of several historic and highly influential programming languages. In this unique collection, you'll learn about the processes that led to specific design decisions, including the goals they had in mind, the trade-offs they had to make, and how their experiences have left an impact on programming today. Masterminds of Programming includes individual interviews with:

  • Adin D. Falkoff: APL
  • Thomas E. Kurtz: BASIC
  • Charles H. Moore: FORTH
  • Robin Milner: ML
  • Donald D. Chamberlin: SQL
  • Alfred Aho, Peter Weinberger, and Brian Kernighan: AWK
  • Charles Geschke and John Warnock: PostScript
  • Bjarne Stroustrup: C++
  • Bertrand Meyer: Eiffel
  • Brad Cox and Tom Love: Objective-C
  • Larry Wall: Perl
  • Simon Peyton Jones, Paul Hudak, Philip Wadler, and John Hughes: Haskell
  • Guido van Rossum: Python
  • Luiz Henrique de Figueiredo and Roberto Ierusalimschy: Lua
  • James Gosling: Java
  • Grady Booch, Ivar Jacobson, and James Rumbaugh: UML
  • Anders Hejlsberg: Delphi inventor and lead developer of C#

If you're interested in the people whose vision and hard work helped shape the computer industry, you'll find Masterminds of Programming fascinating.

About the Author

Federico Biancuzzi is a freelance interviewer. His interviews appeared on publications such as ONLamp.com, LinuxDevCenter.com, SecurityFocus.com, NewsForge.com, Linux.com, TheRegister.co.uk, ArsTechnica.com, the Polish print magazine BSD Magazine, and the Italian print magazine Linux&C.

Shane Warden manages Onyx Neon Press, an independent publisher. His areas of expertise include agile software development, language design, and virtual machines for dynamic languages. He is also a published novelist. His books include The Art of Agile Development and Masterminds of Programming.

Product details

  • Format: Kindle Edition
  • File Size: 2743 KB
  • Print Length: 496 pages
  • Publisher: O'Reilly Media (21 Mar 2009)
  • Sold by: Amazon Media EU S.à r.l.
  • Language English
  • ASIN: B0043D2EEU
  • Text-to-Speech: Enabled
  • Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #60,174 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Target Audience

This book is suitable for anyone interested in the genesis and evolution of computer programming languages. Knowing any of the specific programming languages is not required, though it does help put the interviews into context.

Book Structure

The book is made up of interviews with the creators or key developers of 17 of the key languages used in modern computing today. Each interview is subtly different covering differing topics and ideas but all focus on the language that the interviewee worked on.

Book Style

The interviews are composites created by the authors from a collection of face to face and telephone interviews. All interviews generally contain questions about the genesis of the language, how it evolved, how satisfied they are with the creation, and future directions. There are often questions on using the language, debugging and computer science education. Each interview is different in style and content and the topics covered range quite widely over computing. On the whole most of the interviews do not require any direct technical knowledge of the specific programming language though some of the interviews are more technical than others.

Reviewer's Opinion

On the whole most of the interviews are enlightening and well structured, however they are all different and as a result some are more interesting than others. I found most of the interviews interesting and read most of them all the way through, in doing so I discovered a lot about the personality of the people behind the names and the languages that they created.

It's hard to review a book like this as it is made of so many different parts. Given the breath of the topics covered it very much down to the reader's own interests as to the suitability of the book. On balance I enjoyed the book, it was a very interesting read and though I started all the interviews I did skip some of them as I didn't find them as interesting as some of the others.
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6 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
This book appears to about designing programming languages, a somewhat esoteric subject. Don't be fooled. It is about much more. Whatever your programming language of choice (or compulsion) you will discover why other choices have their place. There are lots of jokes, and explanations of why some of the more puzzling aspects of today's languages came about. If you are a programmer, you should read this book. It is fun and insightful. It also has a thoughtful foreword from Tony Hoare. What more could any book ask?
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4 of 9 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I found most of the articles, which are done in the style of interviews with the relevant person, quite interesting: especially Bjarne Stroustrup on C++.

However I was puzzled by the inclusion of UML and Grady Booch. UML because, unlike every other language, it is not a programming language. Booch because I struggle to find anything he's actually ever done. Yes I know he's written books on OOD (I even read it when they first came out) and I know he worked on UML (who's only real virtue is that it killed-off the 300 different OO notations we used to have). But what has he actually done? His bio seems to claim he's working on a dozen major projects as lead architect, all at the same time and whilst writing hundreds of regular articles etc etc etc. Yeah right. The only thing I can see he's actually done is write the first version of Rational Rose. Which was a god-awful bug-ridden POS. So why would I care what he thinks?

So overall a qualified 'buy' but you won't get much of real value but you should find it interesting.
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Programming: Principles and Practice Using C++ [Addison-Wesley]. &quote;
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