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. 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. 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. 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 taking 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 ponders the morality and politics of code including its implications for
civic life and the economy and the major controversies of our era. In accessible erudite prose
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. 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 in his signature highly
personal style 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.
