"You Are Not Expected to Understand This": How 26 Lines of Code Changed the World Paperback – 15 Nov. 2022

I'm half way through this excellent collection! Nostalgia in plenty for this 50+ year veteran of the computer industry, and lots to learn for those of you born more recently. Oh! The times we had on those big and medium sized systems! Just one for the road "But Hugh, FORTRAN IV is SELF-commenting!"

engaging read

I wish I could give this book a good review but I can't. I would give this book a 2.5 out of 5 review if I could, but I had to round down. Basically, this book is mostly a social Pushing agenda book masquerading as a computer Code History Book. Many of the chapters/stories in it tells you of some code or computer language that was created and them makes a social commentary on it. Which is normally just how bad said code/language made our world. And I'm not joking. In this book, you'll find out how the BASIC computer language allegedly lead to racial inequality, how computer codes allegedly lead to racial profiling, a article that just describes BITCOIN as a wonderful thing because the "bad" people in finance can't control it (the "wonderful" bitcoin fantasy has self destructed since the article was written) and other things I won't bore you to describe. Interspersed with these stories of how the horrible establishment has used or made computers to help hold down the common man (normally done by the evil white males) are some excellent computer history stories that I enjoyed.Please note that some of the criticisms brought up in the book about computers/computer coding and how they are misused in today's society are valid. But if your main goal is to write social commentaries about computers and computer code (which is what most of this book is), at least state that up front so that the reader knows what they are getting and try not to pummel the poor reader with your social agenda. Because of the heavy handiness of the book in this regard, I am probably going to toss the book in the trash as I don't want to subject another poor soul to what I had to endure.

I didn't read the other reviews carefully enough before I bought this book, but I agree with others that the essays in this book are more socially oriented. Technical details are light. That would be fine, except the book is titled and marketed to attract readers interested in the technology of programming.

I was expecting to read something related to programing, not an indictment of programmers as promulgators of racism. Normally I pass books on to friends of family that might enjoy them. This one went into the trash. I read it, but what a waste of time.

I am disappointed because I expected a discussion about coding, the human aspects of debugging and maintaining code, and the impact of invisible, faillible legacy code under the shiny facade of modern tech. But these topics were covered only briefly in three of the short essays that compose this book. The rest is made of articles that have little or no bearing on the subject and could be gleaned from a random forray in Wired.

This book could have been great if it had all the social and political agenda left out of it, got sick of it in the very first pages where author set the tone. I have much better sources for these topics if I wanted to read about it, I really got tricked by this “read bait”.