Coders

Who They Are, What They Think and How They Are Changing Our World

Clive Thompson, Rene Ruiz

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Audio

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English

Bolinda/Macmillan Audio
28 June 2019

Ethical & social aspects of computing; Computer programming & software development

You use software nearly every instant you're awake. And this may sound weirdly obvious, but every single one of those pieces of software was written by a programmer. Programmers are thus among the most quietly influential people on the planet. As we live in a world made of software, they're the architects. The decisions they make guide our behavior. When they make something newly easy to do, we do a lot more of it. If they make it hard or impossible to do something, we do less of it.

If we want to understand how today's world works, we ought to understand something about coders. Who exactly are the people that are building today's world? What makes them tick? What type of personality is drawn to writing software? And perhaps most interestingly - what does it do to them?

One of the first pieces of coding a newbie learns is the program to make the computer say 'Hello, world!' Like that piece of code, Clive Thompson's Coders is a delightful place to begin to understand this vocation, which is both a profession and a way of life and which essentially didn't exist little more than a generation ago, but now is considered just about the only safe bet we can make about what the future holds. Thompson takes us close to some of the great coders of our time and unpacks the surprising history of the field, beginning with the first great coders, who were women. Ironically, if we're going to traffic in stereotypes, women are arguably 'naturally' better at coding than men, but they were written out of the history and shoved out of the seats, for reasons that are illuminating.

Now programming is indeed, if not a pure brotopia, at least an awfully homogeneous community, which attracts people from a very narrow band of backgrounds and personality types. As Thompson learns, the consequences of that are significant - not least being a fetish for disruption at a scale that doesn't leave much time for pondering larger moral issues of collateral damage. At the same time, coding is a marvellous new art form that has improved the world in innumerable ways, and Thompson reckons deeply, as no one before him has, with what great coding in fact looks like, who creates it, and where they come from. To get as close to his subject as he can, he picks up the thread of his own long-abandoned coding practice and tries his mightiest to up his game, with some surprising results.

More and more, any serious engagement with the world demands an engagement with code and its consequences, and to understand code, we must understand coders.

By: Clive Thompson
Read by: Rene Ruiz
Imprint: Bolinda/Macmillan Audio
Country of Publication: Australia
Edition: Unabridged edition
Dimensions: Height: 134mm, Width: 146mm, Spine: 28mm
Weight: 258g
ISBN: 9781529023923
ISBN 10: 1529023920
Publication Date: 28 June 2019
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Audio
Publisher's Status: Active

Clive Thompson is a longtime contributing writer for the New York Times magazine and a columnist for Wired. He is the author of Smarter Than You Think: How Technology is Changing Our Minds for the Better. Rene Ruiz is an accomplished voice actor, stage director and narrator. He created, directed and performed with the Off-Broadway a cappella group Toxic Audio.

Reviews for Coders: Who They Are, What They Think and How They Are Changing Our World

'Clive Thompson is more than a gifted reporter and writer. He is a brilliant social anthropologist. And, in this masterful book, he illuminates both the fascinating coders and the bewildering technological forces that are transforming the world in which we live.' -- David Grann, author of The Lost City of Z 'With his trademark clarity and insight, Clive Thompson gives us an unparalleled vista into the mind-set and culture of programmers, the often-invisible architects and legislators of the digital age.' -- Steven Johnson, author of How We Got to Now