Software Engineering discussion

I enjoyed reading the words of some of the greats in our profession. The interview format kept things interesting, as each interviewee took advantage of the relatively open questions to cover what they wanted to communicate. I am glad that these were conversations WITH the creators, and not necessarily ABOUT their creations, which allowed for broad content, but sometimes left me wanting to know more about the language itself.

I quibble with classifying all of these languages as "programming languages", yet I would not have left any out. There are many, however, that were left out... too many to list (and probably too many to continue reading). We are fortunate that our profession is young enough that most language creators are still alive.

I have two suggestions that I think would have improved this book. First, I think having some code samples at the beginning of each chapter would have helped the reader get some basic idea about the language under discussion. Second, I would have moved the biographies in the appendix into the front so that I could have had some basic idea about the interviewee's background before reading the interview. The use of first names in the interview, combined with having the appendix in alphabetical order without direct linking to the language, made this even more problematic.

In the end, I come away more knowledgeable about languages, commonality and differences in opinions about language design and, more generally, software development, and inspired to learn more. If I were to pick one theme that most language creators need to address for future applications, it would be concurrency (in its many blurry forms). As single CPU speed tapers off, and multi-cores become the norm, this is a clear challenge for the future.

4/5 stars.

"Our book" received a Jolt Award!

http://www.drdobbs.com/joltawards/226...