|
A very interesting new O'Reilly book is just about to hit the shelves. Beautiful Code: Leading Programmers Explain How They Think contains 33 chapters by many truly great hackers, sharing their thoughts as they walk through the design and implementation of code they consider beautiful. I'm honored to be one of the contributors to this volume, and even though the full contributor list does make me want to channel Wayne and Garth, I'm glad to have had this opportunity to write about a project I've been working on for many years, and to highlight some issues I believe are of vital and pressing importance in the ongoing evolution of digital technology and its role in a free society.
I've been skimming through some of the other chapters, and found all of them very intriguing. I'm eagerly waiting to get my hands on the printed book so I can read it closely from cover to cover. The code discussed in the different chapters is in a rich mix of languages: C, C++, Java, Perl, Python, Ruby, Simplified JavaScript, MATLAB, FORTRAN, Haskell, Scheme, Lisp, and Visual Basic all make an appearance. The topics span a diverse range of problem domains, from genetic sequencing to ERP, from regular expression parsing to the implementation of an audio interface for emacs. This promises to be a very interesting read, and I'm not saying that for personal profit :-) All author royalties will be donated to Amnesty International. So check it out... (at O'Reilly's site, or Amazon). I really enjoyed working with Andy Oram and Greg Wilson, the editors, who made many great suggestions. After the chapters were all finalized and the book was off to the printer, I realized I had (as was inevitable) forgotten something: to thank all the beta testers of Cryptonite over the years for their diligent testing of many versions of the system, their meticulous reporting of bugs and misfeatures, and their ideas for things to add. So I'll do that here - thanks a ton, folks! You know who you are.
|
