-
Coders
- The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World
- Narrated by: René Ruiz
- Length: 13 hrs and 22 mins
Add to Cart failed.
Add to Wish List failed.
Remove from wishlist failed.
Adding to library failed
Follow podcast failed
Unfollow podcast failed

pick 2 free titles with trial.
Buy for $20.90
No default payment method selected.
We are sorry. We are not allowed to sell this product with the selected payment method
Listeners also enjoyed...
-
An Economist Walks into a Brothel
- And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk
- By: Allison Schrager
- Narrated by: Holly Palance
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Whether we realize it or not, we all take risks large and small every day. Even the most cautious among us cannot opt out - the question is always which risks to take, not whether to take them at all. What most of us don't know is how to measure those risks and maximize the chances of getting what we want out of life. In An Economist Walks into a Brothel, Schrager equips listeners with five principles for dealing with risk, principles used by some of the world's most interesting risk takers.
-
-
Great Brothel Analysis But Oblivious To Bond Risks
- By Richard Redano on 04-14-19
By: Allison Schrager
-
We Are the Nerds
- The Birth and Tumultuous Life of Reddit, the Internet's Culture Laboratory
- By: Christine Lagorio-Chafkin
- Narrated by: Chloe Cannon
- Length: 16 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Reddit hails itself as "the front page of the Internet". It's the third-most visited website in the US - and yet, millions of Americans have no idea what it is. We Are the Nerds is an engrossing look deep inside this captivating, maddening enterprise, whose army of obsessed users have been credited with everything from solving cold-case crimes and spurring tens of millions of dollars in charitable donations to seeding alt-right fury and landing Donald Trump in the White House.
-
-
Blah
- By Jonasz on 12-04-22
-
Change
- How to Make Big Things Happen
- By: Damon Centola
- Narrated by: James Fouhey
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most of what we know about how ideas spread comes from best-selling authors who give us a compelling picture of a world, in which "influencers" are king, "sticky" ideas "go viral", and good behavior is "nudged" forward. The problem is that the world they describe is a world where information spreads, but beliefs and behaviors stay the same. When it comes to lasting change in what we think or the way we live, the dynamics are different: beliefs and behaviors are not transmitted from person to person in the simple way that a virus is.
-
-
Complex Contagion
- By Dave B on 08-19-21
By: Damon Centola
-
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
- 25th Anniversary Edition
- By: Steven Levy
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 20 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Steven Levy's classic book traces the exploits of the computer revolution's original hackers - those brilliant and eccentric nerds from the late 1950s through the early '80s who took risks, bent the rules, and pushed the world in a radical new direction. With updated material from noteworthy hackers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak, Hackers is a fascinating story that begins in early computer research labs and leads to the first home computers.
-
-
Remember Why You Got Into Computing
- By Dan Collins on 07-01-16
By: Steven Levy
-
The Business of Platforms
- Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power
- By: Michael A. Cusumano, Annabelle Gawer, David B. Yoffie
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A trio of experts on high-tech business strategy and innovation reveal the principles that have made platform businesses the most valuable firms in the world and the first trillion-dollar companies.
-
-
Outside the voice it’s great!
- By Scott Janney on 01-01-21
By: Michael A. Cusumano, and others
-
Smarter Than You Think
- How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better
- By: Clive Thompson
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Smarter Than You Think, Thompson documents how every technological innovation - from the printing press to the telegraph - has provoked the very same anxieties that plague us today. We panic that life will never be the same, that our attentions are eroding, that culture is being trivialized. But as in the past, we adapt, learning to use the new and retaining what’s good of the old.
-
-
Title should be Getting Smarter Through Technology
- By A. Yoshida on 03-10-17
By: Clive Thompson
-
An Economist Walks into a Brothel
- And Other Unexpected Places to Understand Risk
- By: Allison Schrager
- Narrated by: Holly Palance
- Length: 7 hrs and 32 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Whether we realize it or not, we all take risks large and small every day. Even the most cautious among us cannot opt out - the question is always which risks to take, not whether to take them at all. What most of us don't know is how to measure those risks and maximize the chances of getting what we want out of life. In An Economist Walks into a Brothel, Schrager equips listeners with five principles for dealing with risk, principles used by some of the world's most interesting risk takers.
-
-
Great Brothel Analysis But Oblivious To Bond Risks
- By Richard Redano on 04-14-19
By: Allison Schrager
-
We Are the Nerds
- The Birth and Tumultuous Life of Reddit, the Internet's Culture Laboratory
- By: Christine Lagorio-Chafkin
- Narrated by: Chloe Cannon
- Length: 16 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Reddit hails itself as "the front page of the Internet". It's the third-most visited website in the US - and yet, millions of Americans have no idea what it is. We Are the Nerds is an engrossing look deep inside this captivating, maddening enterprise, whose army of obsessed users have been credited with everything from solving cold-case crimes and spurring tens of millions of dollars in charitable donations to seeding alt-right fury and landing Donald Trump in the White House.
-
-
Blah
- By Jonasz on 12-04-22
-
Change
- How to Make Big Things Happen
- By: Damon Centola
- Narrated by: James Fouhey
- Length: 9 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Most of what we know about how ideas spread comes from best-selling authors who give us a compelling picture of a world, in which "influencers" are king, "sticky" ideas "go viral", and good behavior is "nudged" forward. The problem is that the world they describe is a world where information spreads, but beliefs and behaviors stay the same. When it comes to lasting change in what we think or the way we live, the dynamics are different: beliefs and behaviors are not transmitted from person to person in the simple way that a virus is.
-
-
Complex Contagion
- By Dave B on 08-19-21
By: Damon Centola
-
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
- 25th Anniversary Edition
- By: Steven Levy
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 20 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Steven Levy's classic book traces the exploits of the computer revolution's original hackers - those brilliant and eccentric nerds from the late 1950s through the early '80s who took risks, bent the rules, and pushed the world in a radical new direction. With updated material from noteworthy hackers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak, Hackers is a fascinating story that begins in early computer research labs and leads to the first home computers.
-
-
Remember Why You Got Into Computing
- By Dan Collins on 07-01-16
By: Steven Levy
-
The Business of Platforms
- Strategy in the Age of Digital Competition, Innovation, and Power
- By: Michael A. Cusumano, Annabelle Gawer, David B. Yoffie
- Narrated by: Sean Patrick Hopkins
- Length: 8 hrs and 7 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A trio of experts on high-tech business strategy and innovation reveal the principles that have made platform businesses the most valuable firms in the world and the first trillion-dollar companies.
-
-
Outside the voice it’s great!
- By Scott Janney on 01-01-21
By: Michael A. Cusumano, and others
-
Smarter Than You Think
- How Technology Is Changing Our Minds for the Better
- By: Clive Thompson
- Narrated by: Jeff Cummings
- Length: 10 hrs and 41 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Smarter Than You Think, Thompson documents how every technological innovation - from the printing press to the telegraph - has provoked the very same anxieties that plague us today. We panic that life will never be the same, that our attentions are eroding, that culture is being trivialized. But as in the past, we adapt, learning to use the new and retaining what’s good of the old.
-
-
Title should be Getting Smarter Through Technology
- By A. Yoshida on 03-10-17
By: Clive Thompson
-
We Are Anonymous
- Inside the Hacker World of LulzSec, Anonymous, and the Global Cyber Insurgency
- By: Parmy Olson
- Narrated by: Abby Craden
- Length: 14 hrs and 16 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In late 2010, thousands of hacktivists joined a mass digital assault by Anonymous on the websites of VISA, MasterCard, and PayPal to protest their treatment of WikiLeaks. Splinter groups then infiltrated the networks of totalitarian governments in Libya and Tunisia, and an elite team of six people calling themselves LulzSec attacked the FBI, CIA, and Sony. They were flippant and taunting, grabbed headlines, and amassed more than a quarter of a million Twitter followers.
-
-
Interesting book, AWFUL narration
- By Jen on 11-11-14
By: Parmy Olson
-
Coders at Work
- Reflections on the Craft of Programming
- By: Peter Seibel
- Narrated by: Mitchell Dorian, full cast
- Length: 20 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Peter Seibel interviews 15 of the most interesting computer programmers alive today in Coders at Work, offering a companion volume to Apress’ highly acclaimed best-seller Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston. As the words “at work” suggest, Peter Seibel focuses on how his interviewees tackle the day-to-day work of programming, while revealing much more, like how they became great programmers, how they recognize programming talent in others, and what kinds of problems they find most interesting.
-
-
Great book
- By Jay on 05-30-22
By: Peter Seibel
-
The Innovators
- How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
- By: Walter Isaacson
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson’s revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and an indispensable guide to how innovation really happens. What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into disruptive realities? What led to their creative leaps? Why did some succeed and others fail?
-
-
A History of the Ancient Geeks
- By Mark on 10-21-14
By: Walter Isaacson
-
The Pragmatic Programmer: 20th Anniversary Edition, 2nd Edition
- Your Journey to Mastery
- By: David Thomas, Andrew Hunt
- Narrated by: Anna Katarina
- Length: 9 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Dave Thomas and Andy Hunt wrote the first edition of this influential book in 1999 to help their clients create better software and rediscover the joy of coding. These lessons have helped a generation of programmers examine the very essence of software development. Now, 20 years later, this new edition re-examines what it means to be a modern programmer. Topics range from personal responsibility and career development to architectural techniques for keeping your code flexible and easy to adapt and reuse.
-
-
Exquisitely narrated. Not a great text.
- By Phil on 05-26-20
By: David Thomas, and others
-
Elastic
- Flexible Thinking in a Time of Change
- By: Leonard Mlodinow
- Narrated by: Leonard Mlodinow
- Length: 7 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
With rapid technological innovation leading the charge, today's world is transforming itself at an extraordinary and unprecedented pace. As jobs become more multifaceted, as information streams multiply, and as myriad devices place increasing demands on our attention, we are confronted every day with a plethora of new challenges. Fortunately, as Leonard Mlodinow shows, the human brain is uniquely engineered to adapt.
-
-
Very different Mlodinow
- By Petr Kubat on 08-06-18
By: Leonard Mlodinow
-
Synchronicity
- The Epic Quest to Understand the Quantum Nature of Cause and Effect
- By: Paul Halpern
- Narrated by: Jeff Hoyt
- Length: 10 hrs and 34 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
By 100 years ago, it seemed clear that the speed of light was the fastest possible speed. Causality was safe. And then quantum mechanics happened, introducing spooky connections that seemed to circumvent the law of cause and effect. From Aristotle's Physics to quantum teleportation, learn about the scientific pursuit of instantaneous connections in this insightful examination of our world.
-
-
Good enough for lay audience, but lacks depth
- By James S. on 10-12-20
By: Paul Halpern
-
Straight Talk for Startups
- 100 Insider Rules for Beating the Odds - From Mastering the Fundamentals to Selecting Investors, Fundraising, Managing Boards, and Achieving Liquidity
- By: Randy Komisar, Jantoon Reigersman
- Narrated by: Randy Komisar
- Length: 7 hrs and 30 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Veteran venture capitalist Randy Komisar and finance executive Jantoon Reigersman share no-nonsense, counterintuitive guidelines to help anyone build a successful startup. Over the course of their careers, Randy Komisar and Jantoon Reigersman continue to see startups crash and burn because they forget the timeless lessons of entrepreneurship. But, as Komisar and Reigersman show, you can beat the odds if you quickly learn what insiders know about what it takes to build a healthy foundation for a thriving venture.
-
-
Well worth the investment of time.
- By John Shupe on 11-07-18
By: Randy Komisar, and others
-
Hacking Darwin
- Genetic Engineering and the Future of Humanity
- By: Jamie Metzl
- Narrated by: Eric Martin
- Length: 10 hrs and 58 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
From leading geopolitical expert and technology futurist Jamie Metzl comes a groundbreaking exploration of the many ways genetic engineering is shaking the core foundations of our lives-sex, war, love, and death. At the dawn of the genetics revolution, our DNA is becoming as readable, writable, and hackable as our information technology. But as humanity starts retooling our own genetic code, the choices we make today will be the difference between realizing breathtaking advances in human well-being and descending into a dangerous and potentially deadly genetic arms race.
-
-
Technology Overview - Good; Policy Discussion - No
- By sct on 05-18-19
By: Jamie Metzl
-
The Spinning Magnet
- The Electromagnetic Force that Created the Modern World - and Could Destroy It
- By: Alanna Mitchell
- Narrated by: P.J. Ochlan
- Length: 9 hrs and 37 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A cataclysmic planetary phenomenon is gathering force deep within the Earth. The magnetic North Pole will eventually trade places with the South Pole. Satellite evidence suggests to some scientists that the move has already begun, but most still think it won't happen for many decades. All agree that it has happened many times before and will happen again. But this time it will be different. It will be a very bad day for modern civilization.
-
-
Important topic, not what I was looking for
- By Ramona on 03-28-21
By: Alanna Mitchell
-
The Code
- Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America
- By: Margaret O'Mara
- Narrated by: Nan McNamara
- Length: 19 hrs and 11 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Long before Margaret O'Mara became one of our most consequential historians of the American-led digital revolution, she worked in the White House of Bill Clinton and Al Gore in the earliest days of the commercial Internet. There, she saw firsthand how deeply intertwined Silicon Valley was with the federal government - and always had been - and how shallow the common understanding of the secrets of the Valley's success actually was.
-
-
Mostly good, but also irrating
- By Rodney on 12-20-20
By: Margaret O'Mara
-
Rationality
- What It Is, Why It Seems Scarce, Why It Matters
- By: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 11 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In the 21st century, humanity is reaching new heights of scientific understanding - and at the same time appears to be losing its mind. How can a species that developed vaccines for COVID-19 in less than a year produce so much fake news, medical quackery, and conspiracy theorizing? Pinker rejects the cynical cliché that humans are an irrational species - cavemen out of time saddled with biases, fallacies, and illusions.
-
-
Steven Pinker's Frozen Worldview from the 90s
- By Ryan Booth on 11-12-21
By: Steven Pinker
-
The Madness of Crowds
- Gender, Race and Identity
- By: Douglas Murray
- Narrated by: Douglas Murray
- Length: 11 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In The Madness of Crowds Douglas Murray investigates the dangers of ‘woke’ culture and the rise of identity politics. In lively, razor-sharp prose he examines the most controversial issues of our moment: sexuality, gender, technology and race, with interludes on the Marxist foundations of ‘wokeness’, the impact of tech and how, in an increasingly online culture, we must relearn the ability to forgive.
-
-
This book destroys WOKE MADNESS. Read it today.
- By RBS on 12-03-19
By: Douglas Murray
Publisher's Summary
Hello, world.
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. 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. They are the most quietly influential people on the planet, and Coders shines a light on their culture.
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, dramatizing the psychology of the invisible architects of the culture, exploring their passions and their values, as well as their messy history. In nuanced portraits, Coders takes 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 thoughtfully ponders the morality and politics of code, including its implications for civic life and the economy. 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. Thompson wrestles with the major controversies of our era, from the "disruption" fetish of Silicon Valley to the struggle for inclusion by marginalized groups.
In his accessible, erudite style, 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. Coders introduces modern crypto-hackers fighting for your privacy, AI engineers building eerie new forms of machine cognition, teenage girls losing sleep at 24/7 hackathons, and unemployed Kentucky coal-miners learning a new career.
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 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.
Critic Reviews
“In this revealing exploration of programming, programmers, and their far-reaching influence, Wired columnist Thompson opens up an insular world and explores its design philosophy’s consequences, some of them unintended. Through interviews and anecdotes, Thompson expertly plumbs the temperament and motivations of programmers.... [Coders] contains possibly the best argument yet for how social media maneuvers users into more extreme political positions..... Impressive in its clarity and thoroughness, Thompson’s survey shines a much-needed light on a group of people who have exerted a powerful effect on almost every aspect of the modern world.” (Publishers Weekly)
“Fascinating. Thompson is an excellent writer and his subjects are themselves gripping.... [W]hat Thompson does differently is to get really close to the people he writes about: it’s the narrative equivalent of Technicolor, 3D and the microscope.... People who interact with coders routinely, as colleagues, friends or family, could benefit tremendously from these insights.” (Nature)
“With an anthropologist’s eye, [Thompson] outlines [coders’] different personality traits, their history and cultural touchstones. He explores how they live, what motivates them and what they fight about. By breaking down what the actual world of coding looks like...he removes the mystery and brings it into the legible world for the rest of us to debate. Human beings and their foibles are the reason the internet is how it is - for better and often, as this book shows, for worse.” (The New York Times Book Review)
More from the same
What listeners say about Coders
Average Customer RatingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ben N.
- 10-04-19
Skip this book
I've been a "coder" for 20+ years, and so thought it would be interesting to get an outsider's perspective on the field. For the first few chapters I enjoyed the book, and I think he got a lot right - coding is a roller-coaster ride, it takes immortal-amounts of patience, it can make us cantankerous and grumpy, and it might not always be great for our emotional well-being...BUT it's immensely satisfying to build something from nothing and the profession has much less of the posturing and BS than perhaps others do. Your code works, or it doesn't. You fixed the problem, or you didn't. The book captures a lot of these dichotomies, and it was cool to have this articulated more deftly/elegantly than if one of us coders wrote it!
That being said, the political agenda that is artificially woven into an otherwise great exploration of the psyche and importance of coding was, in my opinion, unnecessary, off-base/invalid, and almost offensive. I get the facts - women make up a minority of coders, but that wasn't always the case. The problem is, only one explanation is offered: that male coders must be creating a toxic environment for women...and then the author parades out a bunch of anecdotes in support. For example, the woman who received overly-critical feedback in code reviews. Guess what? That's totally normal in the field. In fact, see preceding chapters: coders are cranky and impatient. I get slammed in code reviews *all the time*. Is it worse for women? I doubt it, but maybe. Or how about the stats that women don't contribute to open source at the rates that men do? In the open source world, no one knows who you are! Not your sex, your race, your age, anything. You have a pseudonym. Your identity doesn't matter. That's the beauty of it. If you have a good pull request, it'll get accepted on the merits - it has nothing to do with your gender. If women are not contributing to open source at the same rate, then does that speak to a toxic culture toward women? Or just that women, for whatever reason, are not contributing to open source. The point is that it would be intellectually more honest to at least offer the possibility of another explanation - that there ARE biological differences between the genders, and it's possible that women by nature aren't, on average, as interested in the largely anti-social professional pursuit of programming.
In all, the book is well written, but I found the social commentary insulting.
28 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Anonymous User
- 03-27-19
Enjoyed the book! But...
I really enjoyed this book and was fascinated by the history and culture surrounding programming. The book is a great balance of inspiring and humbling. I would definitely recommend it to anyone who is interested in some behind the scenes and not regularly pondered areas of coding.
..................................
That being said though I did have some issues with the book. I felt like the author repeated himself a lot, as well as relentlessly try and hammer home his own personal viewpoints on countless matters. Most of which were based on politics and equality (not a bad discussion to have I agree). I found this to be the most exausting part of the book (I am not exaggerating, this took up 33% of the total volume). I can understand his feelings and activist points of view. But bombarding your listeners with political thought experiments and diving so deeply into race and sex in a book about coding seemed out of place and frankly verging on false advertising. It struck me as either filler material or a moral obligation, I'll give him the benefit of the doubt that it was the latter.
....................................
Overall I found the book refreshing and enlightening and reccomend it to anyone.
27 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Trevyn
- 04-08-19
Not for me
This book can be insightful and detailed about certain aspects of technological development and the people/culture behind it. Then, for large parts of several chapters, it devolves into a one-sided social justice crusade that fails to seriously engage in the idea that differences in gender and racial representation might be in part because of different distributions of traits and interests in populations. This is a review, not an argument, so I'll leave it at that. I get that the author might feel like he has a duty to address perceived injustices, and I can appreciate points of view other than my own, but the book really hits you over the head with an over-arching narrative that casts groups of individuals as solid blocks of identity and casts white men as the villains. If you don't want to spend half of your time in this audiobook listening to that message, maybe it's not for you, either.
14 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- David W
- 06-10-20
Don’t be fooled!
This book is a political rant for like-minded social justice warriors. It’s not really about “coders” or coding at all. Pretty misleading and very disappointing.
7 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Stephen B.
- 09-14-20
Pedestrian details and weak arguments
The first half of this book was decent, covering some of the early days of coding/computing/technology. It covers a lot of ground but doesn't go into much depth. At the same time, it fails to mention a number of the early contributors to computer science. If the first half was the entirety of this book, I would have rated it higher.
The second half is where things take a turn for the worst. Here the author's bias and lack of objectivity are readily apparent. In the chapters on AI and big tech/social media, Thompson makes a number of arguments from cherry-picked data and presents his points from only one perspective. The reality is much more complex where problems such as bias in AI and abuse on social networks are much more complicated and nuanced.
Surprisingly, Thompson also argues against things like code bootcamps and STEM programs calling them biased and largely ineffective. On the topic of STEM, he argues that the recent focus in this area is doing harm by pulling away studies from fields such as humanities. It's a pessimistic, zero-sum thinking outlook. Aren't students capable of studying both STEM and humanities? Wouldn't having this wider perspective be good for students and society at large? He also argues against the lack of diversity in tech as being a "sourcing" issue despite providing data to the contrary earlier in discussions around university enrollment. Again, he fails to present the true texture of the problem; i.e. this can be both a sourcing issue as well as an issue of present bias in the field each requiring different solutions to address.
Overall, I was pretty disappointed in this book and would not recommend it.
4 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Will Theall
- 09-03-22
Disappointing
Author interjects his leftist political views at every opportunity. Unfortunately it takes the reader out of the story. Why does everything have to be political nowadays?
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Erika Parker
- 05-18-19
great introduction to coding world
good for those considering the world of coding for themselves or their children, sharing prospects, insights into work environments, personality fits, and resources.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Brian Hamachek
- 05-15-19
Accurate account of the people that write software
As a 33 year old software engineer living in Silicon Valley, I can honestly say that this is one of the few accurate descriptions of who coders are.
2 people found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Zach Meyer
- 05-10-19
Overall good read
I listened at 1.5 and did not have a problem following along. Overall I found this book to be informative and entertaining. I just wish it would of been less political, which I thought took away from some of the main points.
1 person found this helpful
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
- Ryan Linthicum
- 02-16-23
Great!
I’m new to coding and I really enjoyed this big picture understanding of coding, computer programming and it’s culture.
People who viewed this also viewed...
-
Coders at Work
- Reflections on the Craft of Programming
- By: Peter Seibel
- Narrated by: Mitchell Dorian, full cast
- Length: 20 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Peter Seibel interviews 15 of the most interesting computer programmers alive today in Coders at Work, offering a companion volume to Apress’ highly acclaimed best-seller Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston. As the words “at work” suggest, Peter Seibel focuses on how his interviewees tackle the day-to-day work of programming, while revealing much more, like how they became great programmers, how they recognize programming talent in others, and what kinds of problems they find most interesting.
-
-
Great book
- By Jay on 05-30-22
By: Peter Seibel
-
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
- 25th Anniversary Edition
- By: Steven Levy
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 20 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Steven Levy's classic book traces the exploits of the computer revolution's original hackers - those brilliant and eccentric nerds from the late 1950s through the early '80s who took risks, bent the rules, and pushed the world in a radical new direction. With updated material from noteworthy hackers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak, Hackers is a fascinating story that begins in early computer research labs and leads to the first home computers.
-
-
Remember Why You Got Into Computing
- By Dan Collins on 07-01-16
By: Steven Levy
-
Where Wizards Stay Up Late
- The Origins of the Internet
- By: Katie Hafner, Matthew Lyon
- Narrated by: Mark Douglas Nelson
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twenty-five years ago, it didn't exist. Today, 20 million people worldwide are surfing the Net. Where Wizards Stay Up Late is the exciting story of the pioneers responsible for creating the most talked about, most influential, and most far-reaching communications breakthrough since the invention of the telephone. In the 1960s, when computers where regarded as mere giant calculators, J.C.R. Licklider at MIT saw them as the ultimate communications devices.
-
-
Absolutely fascinating and we'll researched
- By Elsa Braun on 10-01-16
By: Katie Hafner, and others
-
The Friendly Orange Glow
- The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture
- By: Brian Dear
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 21 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At a time when Steve Jobs was only a teenager and Mark Zuckerberg wasn't even born, a group of visionary engineers and designers - some of them only high school students - in the late 1960s and 1970s created a computer system called PLATO, which was not only years but light-years ahead in experimenting with how people would learn, engage, communicate, and play through connected computers.
-
-
Memory lane for the cyberist.
- By Robert C. Hickcox on 08-08-18
By: Brian Dear
-
Understanding Software
- Max Kanat-Alexander on Simplicity, Coding, and How to Suck Less as a Programmer
- By: Max Kanat-Alexander
- Narrated by: Steve Menasche
- Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Understanding Software, Max Kanat-Alexander, Technical Lead for Code Health at Google, shows you how to bring simplicity back to computer programming. Max explains to you why programmers suck, and how to suck less as a programmer. There's just too much complex stuff in the world. Complex stuff can't be used, and it breaks too easily. Complexity is stupid. Simplicity is smart.
-
-
I want more books like this on audible
- By Nathaniel C. on 12-13-19
-
The Rules of Programming
- The Missing Manual: How to Write Better Code
- By: Chris Zimmerman
- Narrated by: Ray Greenley
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This philosophy-of-programming guide presents a unique and entertaining take on how to think about programming. A collection of twenty-one pragmatic rules, each presented in a stand-alone chapter, captures the essential wisdom that every freshly minted programmer needs to know and provides thought-provoking insights for more seasoned programmers. Author Chris Zimmerman, cofounder of the video game studio Sucker Punch Productions, teaches basic truths of programming by wrapping them in memorable aphorisms and driving them home with examples drawn from real code.
By: Chris Zimmerman
-
Coders at Work
- Reflections on the Craft of Programming
- By: Peter Seibel
- Narrated by: Mitchell Dorian, full cast
- Length: 20 hrs and 52 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Peter Seibel interviews 15 of the most interesting computer programmers alive today in Coders at Work, offering a companion volume to Apress’ highly acclaimed best-seller Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston. As the words “at work” suggest, Peter Seibel focuses on how his interviewees tackle the day-to-day work of programming, while revealing much more, like how they became great programmers, how they recognize programming talent in others, and what kinds of problems they find most interesting.
-
-
Great book
- By Jay on 05-30-22
By: Peter Seibel
-
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution
- 25th Anniversary Edition
- By: Steven Levy
- Narrated by: Mike Chamberlain
- Length: 20 hrs and 23 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Steven Levy's classic book traces the exploits of the computer revolution's original hackers - those brilliant and eccentric nerds from the late 1950s through the early '80s who took risks, bent the rules, and pushed the world in a radical new direction. With updated material from noteworthy hackers such as Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg, Richard Stallman, and Steve Wozniak, Hackers is a fascinating story that begins in early computer research labs and leads to the first home computers.
-
-
Remember Why You Got Into Computing
- By Dan Collins on 07-01-16
By: Steven Levy
-
Where Wizards Stay Up Late
- The Origins of the Internet
- By: Katie Hafner, Matthew Lyon
- Narrated by: Mark Douglas Nelson
- Length: 10 hrs and 19 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Twenty-five years ago, it didn't exist. Today, 20 million people worldwide are surfing the Net. Where Wizards Stay Up Late is the exciting story of the pioneers responsible for creating the most talked about, most influential, and most far-reaching communications breakthrough since the invention of the telephone. In the 1960s, when computers where regarded as mere giant calculators, J.C.R. Licklider at MIT saw them as the ultimate communications devices.
-
-
Absolutely fascinating and we'll researched
- By Elsa Braun on 10-01-16
By: Katie Hafner, and others
-
The Friendly Orange Glow
- The Untold Story of the PLATO System and the Dawn of Cyberculture
- By: Brian Dear
- Narrated by: George Newbern
- Length: 21 hrs and 6 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
At a time when Steve Jobs was only a teenager and Mark Zuckerberg wasn't even born, a group of visionary engineers and designers - some of them only high school students - in the late 1960s and 1970s created a computer system called PLATO, which was not only years but light-years ahead in experimenting with how people would learn, engage, communicate, and play through connected computers.
-
-
Memory lane for the cyberist.
- By Robert C. Hickcox on 08-08-18
By: Brian Dear
-
Understanding Software
- Max Kanat-Alexander on Simplicity, Coding, and How to Suck Less as a Programmer
- By: Max Kanat-Alexander
- Narrated by: Steve Menasche
- Length: 6 hrs and 4 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In Understanding Software, Max Kanat-Alexander, Technical Lead for Code Health at Google, shows you how to bring simplicity back to computer programming. Max explains to you why programmers suck, and how to suck less as a programmer. There's just too much complex stuff in the world. Complex stuff can't be used, and it breaks too easily. Complexity is stupid. Simplicity is smart.
-
-
I want more books like this on audible
- By Nathaniel C. on 12-13-19
-
The Rules of Programming
- The Missing Manual: How to Write Better Code
- By: Chris Zimmerman
- Narrated by: Ray Greenley
- Length: 7 hrs and 10 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This philosophy-of-programming guide presents a unique and entertaining take on how to think about programming. A collection of twenty-one pragmatic rules, each presented in a stand-alone chapter, captures the essential wisdom that every freshly minted programmer needs to know and provides thought-provoking insights for more seasoned programmers. Author Chris Zimmerman, cofounder of the video game studio Sucker Punch Productions, teaches basic truths of programming by wrapping them in memorable aphorisms and driving them home with examples drawn from real code.
By: Chris Zimmerman
-
Dealers of Lightning
- Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age
- By: Michael Hiltzik
- Narrated by: Forrest Sawyer
- Length: 5 hrs and 52 mins
- Abridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The riveting story of the legendary Xerox PARC, a collection of eccentric young inventors brought together by Xerox Corporation at a facility in Palo Alto, California, during the mind-blowing intellectual ferment of the '70s and '80s.
-
-
Audio quality is bad, story is awe inducing
- By David Phillips on 01-14-15
By: Michael Hiltzik
-
Valley of Genius
- By: Adam Fisher
- Narrated by: Pete Larkin
- Length: 18 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
A candid, colorful, and comprehensive oral history that reveals the secrets of Silicon Valley - from the origins of Apple and Atari to the present day clashes of Google and Facebook, and all the start-ups and disruptions that happened along the way. Drawing on over 200 in-depth interviews, Valley of Genius takes listeners from the dawn of the personal computer and the Internet, through the heyday of the web, up to the very moment when our current technological reality was invented.
-
-
Annoying to listen to
- By Jd on 07-21-18
By: Adam Fisher
-
When Computing Got Personal
- A History of the Desktop Computer
- By: Matt Nicholson
- Narrated by: Norman Gilligan
- Length: 11 hrs and 39 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
This is the story of how a handful of geeks and mavericks dragged the computer out of corporate back rooms and laboratories and into our living rooms and offices. It is a tale not only of extraordinary innovation and vision but also of cunning business deals, boardroom tantrums and acrimonious lawsuits.
-
-
Good Book, Horrible Narrator.
- By Walker Dodson on 08-14-16
By: Matt Nicholson
-
How the Internet Happened
- By: Brian McCullough
- Narrated by: Timothy Andrés Pabon
- Length: 13 hrs and 29 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
The Internet was never intended for you, opines Brian McCullough in this lively narrative of an era that utterly transformed everything we thought we knew about technology. In How the Internet Happened, he chronicles the whole fascinating story for the first time, beginning in a dusty Illinois basement in 1993, when a group of college kids set off a once-in-an-epoch revolution with what would become the first "dotcom".
-
-
Critically empty history
- By Keith on 12-19-20
By: Brian McCullough
-
Computer Programming Bible
- A Step by Step Guide on How to Master from the Basics to Advanced of Python, C, C++, C#, HTML Coding Raspberry Pi3
- By: C.P.A. Inc
- Narrated by: Adam Greco
- Length: 4 hrs and 55 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
In today’s technologically dominated world, it’s only natural to become interested in the workings of computers and ponder on the idea of developing your very own app or game. Who knows, maybe, you have had a million-dollar idea planned out in your mind for a while now. But every time you think about acting on it, reality hits you with the fact that there’s one huge obstacle in your way: You don’t know how to code.
-
-
Great manual
- By Amazon Customer on 01-05-22
By: C.P.A. Inc
-
The Innovators
- How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution
- By: Walter Isaacson
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 17 hrs and 28 mins
- Unabridged
-
Overall
-
Performance
-
Story
Following his blockbuster biography of Steve Jobs, The Innovators is Walter Isaacson’s revealing story of the people who created the computer and the Internet. It is destined to be the standard history of the digital revolution and an indispensable guide to how innovation really happens. What were the talents that allowed certain inventors and entrepreneurs to turn their visionary ideas into disruptive realities? What led to their creative leaps? Why did some succeed and others fail?
-
-
A History of the Ancient Geeks
- By Mark on 10-21-14
By: Walter Isaacson