Masterminds of Programming: Conversations with the Creators of Major Programming Languages

It's really enlightening to get into the heads of programming languages designers and understand some of the ideas behind the way each of them designed the language, the problems they were trying to solve and how they solved them. I find that very interesting and mind opening and I recommend this book to anyone who is interested in computer sciences as well as any programmer who aspires to be better.

Masterminds of Programming is a lot of different things, and it will almost certainly make a few programmers revisit their language wars. But the book transcends that. There are 17 languages discussed in the book, but there are 27 people interviewed - language developers. And while there are funny moments - perhaps even moments that are arguable - there is also a lot of perspective that would otherwise have been absent had the arguable stuff not been put out there. These are interviews, folks, not religious textbooks. The one thing that this book suffers from is being of such wide scope that it's hard to explain to people. The one thing that no other book has, though, is the beginning of a discussion on language development - not to mention the software engineering perspective on these projects that are at varying levels of maturity. On [...], I gave this book a 10/10. Here, I give it 5/5. It's well written, it covers more ground than any computing related book that I have encountered, and it shows new dimensions to familiar subjects that would have otherwise been lost in the silicon sands of time.

Federico Biancuzzi and Shane Warden's MASTERMINDS OF PROGRAMMING provides a series of discussions with some of the creators of major programming languages, featuring exclusive interviews with the creators of several historic programming languages. From ideas that led to specific design decisions to goals of the early pioneers of software, this is an outstanding recommendation for any computer collection.

I've been reading this book off and on for the past week and I have to say I'm really enjoying it. It's great to get perspectives from the creators of a variety of programming languages and learn why they made the choices they did, good or bad. As one of the other reviewers posted here, there are some unintentional funny moments when creators of one language criticize another and aren't exactly correct in their comments. Personally, I think that adds to the entertainment value of the book and shows that we're all human. If you're looking for a strict textbook on programming languages, this isn't exactly what you're looking for. But if you'd like to glean some insight on 17 different programming languages, their creators, and their reasoning and opinions on what they and others have done, this is an entertaining and informative read.

Along with Donald Knuth's Art of Computer Programming, this book will be a key part of my Computer Science book collection. It is vital to capture the experience of the key developers of programming languages (we've already lost John Backus the lead FORTRAN developer, Grace Hopper of COBOL fame and Ken Iverson author of the APL and J languages). This book captures the major technical decisions and frames of mind which led to the development of prominent historical and contemporary languages, and gives the motivations and historical framework within which it became necessary to introduce a new language and/or style of programming. This book will also serve in a vital role to inspire new generations of programmers and computer scientists, whether or not they will find it necessary to introduce a new language or programming paradigm. During the last thirty years our field has reached a stage when it has become both fitting and necessary to capture the experience of its pioneering leaders, but as is fitting with the O'Reilly series this book captures the mindset and technical decision making which led to their work and it is much more than a mere homage to past efforts. --Ira Laefsky