Coders at Work — Index of All 15 Programmer Interviews

■ What is Coders at Work? Written by Peter Seibel (2009). A collection of long-form interviews with 15 programmers who shaped computing history. Each chapter is a conversation with one programmer, covering how they started programming, their debugging methods, design philosophy, and career turning points. At over 600 pages it is a substantial read, but each chapter stands alone — start with whoever interests you most. ■ Ch.1 Jamie Zawinski (48 pages) Lisp hacker / early Netscape developer / nightclub owner. Started writing Lisp at Carnegie Mellon's AI lab as a teenager. Worked at Lucid on XEmacs, then joined Netscape to build the Unix browser and mail client. Led the launch of mozilla.org in 1998 but left after a year, disillusioned by slow progress. Later bought and ran DNA Lounge, a nightclub in San Francisco. Topics: hatred of C++, the joy and burden of having millions use your software, the value of being self-taught. ■ Ch.2 Brad Fitzpatrick (42 pages) Creator of LiveJournal / memc