One of the many fine things about the work of Clive Thompson, on the other hand, is his gusty pleasure in our moment ... He likes coders—people who create computer code for a living—and is fascinated by their stories of how they discovered coding, what it’s like to code, and the wonderfully weird and weirdly wonderful world they have helped build ... Anthropologist Clifford Geertz would have admired his thick description of the conditions and structures within which people and machines interact. Never, however, does Thompson lose the personal touch. An avalanche of profiles, stories, quips, and anecdotes in this beautifully reported book returns us constantly to people, their stories, their hopes and thrills and disappointments ... the technical aspect never overwhelms Coders. Rather, it’s the background program for the book, a productive global purr that lets everything happen ... All is not light. Everyone should read Chapter 8, 'Hackers, Crackers, and Freedom Fighters,' which tackles the ambiguous moral and ethical areas where coders, often outright and proudly, run afoul of the law. It’s superb ... Fun to read, this book knows its stuff and makes it fun to learn.
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