The Devil in the Stack
Andrew Smith . August 2024 . Beaverton Lib. 005.1 SMI
My first glance at this book was off-putting - I somehow got the idea that the author thought perjoratively about programmers and technologists. The book is actually a journalist making a deep and sincere dive into software, the communities of people who create and maintain it, and how they think about it.
pXI Prologue, 2013 and Bitcoin , pseudonymous creator Satoshi Nakamoto
pXI Adam Back cryptographer, cyberpunk, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hashcash
- pXIII Bitcoin uses C++
pXIV Bitcoin exegesis: Satoshi not C++ native, learned to code in 1980s, mixed US/British spellings
pXV Russian(s)? Vladislav Surkov? Putin’s Rasputinreflexive control
pXXVIII TV shows Silicon ValleyMr. RobotRussian Doll 10Xer 5% women 3% black
pXXVIII Facebook Myanmar genocideIndiaSri Lanka
- p001 1700 to 9000 programming languages
p002 freeCodeCamp 2014 Quincy Larson
p002 trio of web languages: HTML CSS JavaScript
- p003 shift-devil: dash that should have been underscore
p005 Pascal case Camel case
p005 lorem ipsum
- p007 programming is never easy ... accept that feeling -- of being constantly wrong and not knowing
- p008 ... exposes me as probably no smarter than an economist.
p011 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Weinberg The Psychology of Computer Programming
p016 Bloomberg essay What is code?
p018 Nicholas Tollervey Don't let anyone tell you code is not political
p018 Zen of Python
- p019 There should be one - and preferably only one - obvious way to do it. Although that way may not be obvious at first unless you're Dutch.