"Programmers at Work... does for budding software writers what the Paris Review interviews did for would-be fiction writers. It provides comfort, inspiration, and a sense of community with those who have already succeeded in the field...it is not to be missed." - Erik Sandberg-Diment, The New York Times
Our world reverberates with the legacy of those early software architects. The constraints these first programmers faced were daunting—like packing functionality into PCs with just 64KB of memory—yet their approaches and solutions still offer practical lessons for today. This is especially true for programmers working in fields like robotics, where tight code and limited memory remain daily challenges.
Revisiting these conversations makes clear to software creators today how human imagination remains at the core of technological progress. And you, too—whether you're a seasoned engineer or a curious student—will find echoes of your own journey across these interviews.
The voices captured here are more than a record of the past. It is a set of living dialogues—conversations filled with enduring practices and creative sparks. They reveal a mindset--a combination of playfulness, discipline, and drive. These are the ingredients of innovation, as essential today on the new emerging platforms as they were in the earliest days of the PC.
