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date = '2025-09-03T18:28:08+02:00'
draft = true
title = 'Coders at Work'
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![coders-at-work](/images/coders-at-work.jpg#floatright)

Coders at Work is a book written by Peter Seibel, a programmer who decided to interview some of the most influential coders in the Computer Science field. 
I think this book is a must read for anyone who wants to gain an in-depth view of what prompted the best programmers in the world to start tinkering with computers and code.

To be frank each chapter read of this book has motivated me to immediately stop anything that I was doing and just get to coding, so it is definitely a good motivator to get into the Computer Science field.
Additionally, sometimes to new programmers it might be challenging and overwhelming to get to realize how much there is to learn and how advanced the people at the top are.
There is no doubt whatsoever that each person interviewed in this book is a world-renown coder, a master of their craft.
Nevertheless the interview format and the sometimes informal responses show that in the end they also started just like us from scratch, sometimes late in life. 
Because of this, I think the message of the book is that anyone can program, regardless of when they start or what background they are from. 

In this review I would like to write a short paragraph about each chapter and summarize what I think are the most important takeaways.

Joshua Bloch is a Chief Java architect at Google. 
One of the interesting things that he mentions is that in his opinion there are two books any programmer should read, one of them being _The Elements of Style_, which is a book that I have known for a while.
It is definitely a recommended read for anyone writing prose, as it contains some of the most important rules which should guide the writer towards writing clearly.
On the topic of picking the right things to read and learn, Joshua Bloch says of programming languages: _It's like choosing a bar. You want to go to a bar that servers good drinks, but that's not the most important thing. 
It's who hangs out there and what they talk about._