NF

Lot of good ideas in the book. ( )

I loved this book! Great recommendation from my mom. The author interviewed so many people, and told so many great stories. Would be interesting to read again in 10 years and see how much of it stands the rest of time. ( )

While Thompson clearly wishes he understood his subject, there are just too many howlers in this book for it to be taken seriously. Seriously, you shake this book and showers of ridiculous fall out.

For what it's worth:
- nobody argues about "why bubblesort is so awful". Honestly, this is not something people talk about.
- there is no "classic dilemma in game thory" called the "Secretary Problem". Thompson clearly means the Stable Marriage problem (yes, the name is problematic but that's what it's called).
- the field has mostly moved on from lionizing the shouty arrogant self-important douchebag as the model of the "extraordinarily good programmer", and has settled on the notion that programming is a social activity.

I'm sure there's more, but I stopped reading when it became clear that Thompson's dearth of clue is bottomless, before I got 100 pages in. ( )

Spectacular in every way a great piece of journalism should be. Studs Turkel's "Working" for the age of software. ( )