Edit: Downvoted? I was being serious: Programmers at Work was a mid-80s book interviewing a bunch of programmers from all over the industry. My copy still sits on my bookshelf, which is more than most computing books.
I'm really hoping that the content meets a certain level of technicality. The fact that it is written by Peter Seiblel and the interview previews on each one seems to indicate that it will be. I'm looking forward to learning what scares Ken Thompson about modern programming and anything with Simon Peyton-Jones will be entertaining and a little mind-expanding.
Looks like a must-read to me. My CS professors name drop half of the interviewees daily in lectures. It'd be nice to be prepared with a solid background.
It's good to see a book like this that for once doesn't list the Microsoft and Apple crews. No offense to Gates, Allen, Woz, et al, but their story is overdocumented. There are many more not-as-frontpage histories to learn about and this book seems to contain a good portion of them.
Edit: Downvoted? I was being serious: Programmers at Work was a mid-80s book interviewing a bunch of programmers from all over the industry. My copy still sits on my bookshelf, which is more than most computing books.
The original author’s blog about the book is at http://programmersatwork.wordpress.com/