Coders

Fascinating. Thompson is an excellent writer and his subjects are themselves gripping … Many books have covered this territory, but Coders is bang up to date in a fast-moving world. * Nature *[Thompson] 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[Thompson] outlines [coders’] different personality traits, their history and cultural touchstones … 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. * New York Times *With his trademark clarity and insight, 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 NowCoders is an engrossing, deeply clued-in ethnography, and it’s also a book about power, a new kind: where it comes from, how it feels to wield it, who gets to try – and how all that is changing. – Robin Sloan, author of Mr. Penumbra’s 24-Hour BookstoreBefore I read this brilliantly accessible book … coding was something of a foggy concept to me … There are strings of engaging insights into the anthropology of computer programmers. * Bookseller *

An avalanche of profiles, stories, quips, and anecdotes in this beautifully reported book returns us constantly to people, their stories, their hopes and thrills and disappointments … Fun to read, this book knows its stuff and makes it fun to learn.

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.