Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World

4.4 4.4 out of 5 stars | 366 ratings

Price: 17.72

Last update: 02-25-2025


About this item

Hello, world.

Facebook's algorithms shaping the news. Self-driving cars roaming the streets. Revolution on Twitter and romance on Tinder. We live in a world constructed of code - and coders are the ones who built it for us. From acclaimed tech writer Clive Thompson comes a brilliant anthropological reckoning with the most powerful tribe in the world today, computer programmers, in a book that interrogates who they are, how they think, what qualifies as greatness in their world, and what should give us pause. They are the most quietly influential people on the planet, and Coders shines a light on their culture.

In pop culture and media, the people who create the code that rules our world are regularly portrayed in hackneyed, simplified terms, as ciphers in hoodies. Thompson goes far deeper, dramatizing the psychology of the invisible architects of the culture, exploring their passions and their values, as well as their messy history. In nuanced portraits, Coders takes us close to some of the great programmers of our time, including the creators of Facebook's News Feed, Instagram, Google's cutting-edge AI, and more. Speaking to everyone from revered "10X" elites to neophytes, back-end engineers, and front-end designers, Thompson explores the distinctive psychology of this vocation - which combines a love of logic, an obsession with efficiency, the joy of puzzle-solving, and a superhuman tolerance for mind-bending frustration.

Along the way, Coders thoughtfully ponders the morality and politics of code, including its implications for civic life and the economy. Programmers shape our everyday behavior: When they make something easy to do, we do more of it. When they make it hard or impossible, we do less of it. Thompson wrestles with the major controversies of our era, from the "disruption" fetish of Silicon Valley to the struggle for inclusion by marginalized groups.

In his accessible, erudite style, Thompson unpacks the surprising history of the field, beginning with the first coders - brilliant and pioneering women, who, despite crafting some of the earliest personal computers and programming languages, were later written out of history. Coders introduces modern crypto-hackers fighting for your privacy, AI engineers building eerie new forms of machine cognition, teenage girls losing sleep at 24/7 hackathons, and unemployed Kentucky coal-miners learning a new career.

At the same time, the book deftly illustrates how programming has become a marvelous new art form - a source of delight and creativity, not merely danger. To get as close to his subject as possible, Thompson picks up the thread of his own long-abandoned coding skills as he reckons with what superb programming looks like.

To understand the world today, we need to understand code and its consequences. With Coders, Thompson gives a definitive look into the heart of the machine.


Top reviews from the United States

  • Christopher Allbritton
    5.0 out of 5 stars Cracking read on the history of coders, coding and software ... and their future
    Reviewed in the United States on April 5, 2019
    As a former tech reporter myself, and--full disclosure--a friend of the author, I'm predisposed to like this book. However, even were I not, Coders resonates as a necessary book for our current moment.

    At no other time in recent history has software and the people who make it been more critical to how we experience the world. Thanks to the current "pics or it didn't happen" mentality, Thompson's talent at digging into the personalities and the quirks of the mostly men (and the few women) who write the code that we rely on to stay in touch with loved ones, share experiences, shop, consume media, etc., should make readers to think about how the foundations of so much of daily life are produced.

    He deftly exhumes the history of the software industry from its early days when coding was considered secretarial labor (and thus left to the ladies) to today's more male-dominated environment, where software bros chase the big score. He asks the right questions: Why did this happen and what was the effect of that shift? What are the knock-on impacts when coders are overwhelmingly white (or Asian), male, and convinced of their own overweening intelligence? Is the current, toxic environment found online solely because humans can be pretty awful to one another? Or is it because the guys who coded the platform just didn't think about online abuse because they never had to? Did that ignorance lead them to unwittingly enable the abuse, fake news, and mob culture we now have to endure? Thompson convincingly argues that a fair amount of that ignorance is at fault.

    Ultimately, code doesn't just happen; humans with their weirdo attitudes, biases, ideologies, and faults write it, and they tend to encode into the code itself those very same attitudes, biases, ideologies, and faults -- whether they mean to or not. That's why it's important to understand the history of coders and the code they write. Given how important software is to the modern world -- a glitch at one airport can disrupt airline traffic all over the world, just to name one recent example -- we also have to know who the authors are.

    Thompson's book does that, and with a verve, style, and brisk pace that makes Coders a readable, engaging, and valuable addition to this field of study.
  • Gravity O'Monk
    5.0 out of 5 stars A clear-eyed, contemporary history of those who write the software that's eating the world
    Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2019
    Love this book - I manage a team of software developers and bought a copy for everyone so that the spirit and diversity celebrated in this book can inform how we all think about who we are, who we can be, in this crazy industry we work in. "Coders" will be the definitive history of the early days of digital tech, and yes, we are decidedly still in the early days.

    Clive is a master story teller who brings his unique energy to every side of the story -- and with "Coders" some sides never really seen before. With a modern history of software developers that breaks from the common narrative of the lone dude hero nerd (or, at most, two dudes with the same first name, a'la Woz and Jobs or Carmack and Romero), Clive explains how we got here (2019), in not only in the big picture transformations from punch card programming to the phreaks and geeks era, but also from 2010 to 2019. What's changed since the days where it seemed like services like Facebook and Twitter were once keys to unlocking democracy, to today where calls to dismantle or legislate "Big Tech" dominate the headlines? A lack of product foresight, perhaps; follow the money, as usual. Thompson traces the threads through this still evolving history in a detailed, rigorous, but classically Clive-ian fun fashion. And while the exuberant optimism of "Smarter Than You Think" (Thompson's earlier book) is strongly tempered in "Coders" with today's troll filled, robo-clicked, blackbox algorithm concerns, Clive still manages to point ahead, with people and policies and tech that could lead to a hopefully brighter future.
    Customer image
    Gravity O'Monk
    5.0 out of 5 stars
    A clear-eyed, contemporary history of those who write the software that's eating the world

    Reviewed in the United States on June 29, 2019
    Love this book - I manage a team of software developers and bought a copy for everyone so that the spirit and diversity celebrated in this book can inform how we all think about who we are, who we can be, in this crazy industry we work in. "Coders" will be the definitive history of the early days of digital tech, and yes, we are decidedly still in the early days.

    Clive is a master story teller who brings his unique energy to every side of the story -- and with "Coders" some sides never really seen before. With a modern history of software developers that breaks from the common narrative of the lone dude hero nerd (or, at most, two dudes with the same first name, a'la Woz and Jobs or Carmack and Romero), Clive explains how we got here (2019), in not only in the big picture transformations from punch card programming to the phreaks and geeks era, but also from 2010 to 2019. What's changed since the days where it seemed like services like Facebook and Twitter were once keys to unlocking democracy, to today where calls to dismantle or legislate "Big Tech" dominate the headlines? A lack of product foresight, perhaps; follow the money, as usual. Thompson traces the threads through this still evolving history in a detailed, rigorous, but classically Clive-ian fun fashion. And while the exuberant optimism of "Smarter Than You Think" (Thompson's earlier book) is strongly tempered in "Coders" with today's troll filled, robo-clicked, blackbox algorithm concerns, Clive still manages to point ahead, with people and policies and tech that could lead to a hopefully brighter future.
    Images in this review
  • Dana Golden
    4.0 out of 5 stars I know coders, I work with coders, this book is certainly about those people.
    Reviewed in the United States on August 20, 2019
    The book is an exploration into the sociology experiment we call coding. The book progresses in movements and considers the deep ramifactions of both the demographics of coding and the psychology of coding. Overall, it works well as an exploration into the soul of the people who will control the modern world.
    My one complaint is that the book tends to put coders in a box and neglects to consider the full spectrum of individuals who write code. The book, like most historical texts, thrives on narrative and should not be punished too harshly for doing such.
    Whether you are a deep algorithm enthusiast or a business analyst trying to understand your weird coworkers, this book will extend an interesting view into how coding functions as a part of modern society.
  • HelenAllen
    5.0 out of 5 stars Highly recommended - One of the most amazing books I have read
    Reviewed in the United States on May 31, 2019
    I can't say enough about how much I love this book. I read an excerpt from it before it was published and I immediately jumped on a pre-order. I have been in the world of programming and technology for 40 years, having studied it in college and then spending my entire career in it. I am also a woman. So I have seen and lived most of what the author presents. I found the writing very smart and engaging and the research is impeccable. Furthermore, one of my favorite aspects of the book is that each chapter is almost a stand-alone topic. It is a long book, but well worth every hour I spent reading it. It is staying on my kindle as reference and future re-reading.
  • DL
    3.0 out of 5 stars Not a great book, not a bad book
    Reviewed in the United States on April 18, 2019
    I thought this would be an interesting book - knowing virtually nothing about coding or coding culture. Although it was interesting it was also repetitive and at times ponderous - filled with jargon, references to "his friend x or y," and written with "a homey touch." I was most surprised that apparetly it never occurred to the author that this male dominated field would be filled with sexism and harrassment - not unlike human medicine, basic science, and physics. I did learn a few things but I wouldn't read it again and will delete it off my device.
  • Jonathan Visona
    5.0 out of 5 stars As Promised
    Reviewed in the United States on September 22, 2024
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