Coders at Work


Book Description

Peter Seibel interviews 15 of the most interesting computer programmers alive today in Coders at Work, offering a companion volume to Apress’s highly acclaimed best-seller Founders at Work by Jessica Livingston. As the words “at work” suggest, Peter Seibel focuses on how his interviewees tackle the day-to-day work of programming, while revealing much more, like how they became great programmers, how they recognize programming talent in others, and what kinds of problems they find most interesting. Hundreds of people have suggested names of programmers to interview on the Coders at Work web site: www.codersatwork.com. The complete list was 284 names. Having digested everyone’s feedback, we selected 15 folks who’ve been kind enough to agree to be interviewed: Frances Allen: Pioneer in optimizing compilers, first woman to win the Turing Award (2006) and first female IBM fellow Joe Armstrong: Inventor of Erlang Joshua Bloch: Author of the Java collections framework, now at Google Bernie Cosell: One of the main software guys behind the original ARPANET IMPs and a master debugger Douglas Crockford: JSON founder, JavaScript architect at Yahoo! L. Peter Deutsch: Author of Ghostscript, implementer of Smalltalk-80 at Xerox PARC and Lisp 1.5 on PDP-1 Brendan Eich: Inventor of JavaScript, CTO of the Mozilla Corporation Brad Fitzpatrick: Writer of LiveJournal, OpenID, memcached, and Perlbal Dan Ingalls: Smalltalk implementor and designer Simon Peyton Jones: Coinventor of Haskell and lead designer of Glasgow Haskell Compiler Donald Knuth: Author of The Art of Computer Programming and creator of TeX Peter Norvig: Director of Research at Google and author of the standard text on AI Guy Steele: Coinventor of Scheme and part of the Common Lisp Gang of Five, currently working on Fortress Ken Thompson: Inventor of UNIX Jamie Zawinski: Author of XEmacs and early Netscape/Mozilla hacker




Nam June Paik


Book Description

Explore the ground-breaking work of 20th-century, avant-garde artist Nam June Paik, the pioneer of video art, and discover his impact on the digital age. Nam June Paik was one of the most presciently visionary artists of his generation, one who foresaw the ascendance of the screen in modern life, coined the phrase "electronic superhighway", and celebrated these developments with a humor and whimsy that counteracts some of the darker aspects of our technological age. This book features works from throughout Paik's five-decade career--from robots made from old TV screens to stills from his innovative video works and views of his renowned room-sized installations. Archival materials and excerpts of Paik's own writings offer a deeper understanding of the artist's extraordinary collaborative career. He had exchanges with avant-garde artists, musicians, and choreographers, including Charlotte Moorman, John Cage, Merce Cunningham, Joseph Beuys, and members of the Fluxus movement. Essays explore how Paik influenced a global network of artists and pioneered a radical and cutting-edge art practice. They also consider how Paik's transnational approach to art presaged today's issues around borders, immigration, cultural appropriation, and nationalism. By envisioning a future that has become a reality, Paik's work--and its humanity, scope, and optimism--is perhaps more important than ever. Published with Tate




Practical Common Lisp


Book Description

* Treats LISP as a language for commercial applications, not a language for academic AI concerns. This could be considered to be a secondary text for the Lisp course that most schools teach . This would appeal to students who sat through a LISP course in college without quite getting it – so a "nostalgia" approach, as in "wow-lisp can be practical..." * Discusses the Lisp programming model and environment. Contains an introduction to the language and gives a thorough overview of all of Common Lisp’s main features. * Designed for experienced programmers no matter what languages they may be coming from and written for a modern audience—programmers who are familiar with languages like Java, Python, and Perl. * Includes several examples of working code that actually does something useful like Web programming and database access.




The Anatomy of Peace


Book Description

“Open Letter to the American People”, signed by Owen J. Roberts, J.W. Fulbright, Claude Pepper, Elbert D. Thomas, and other dignitaries: “The first atomic bomb destroyed more than the city of Hiroshima. It also exploded our inherited, outdated political ideas. “A few days before the force of Nature was tried out for the first time in history, the San Francisco Charter was ratified in Washington. The dream of a League of Nations, after 26 years, was accepted by the Senate. “How long will the United Nations Charter endure? With luck, a generation? A century? There is no one who does not hope for at least that much luck- for the Charter, for himself, for his work, and for his children’s children. But is it enough to have Peace by Luck? Peace by Law is what the peoples of the world, beginning with our selves, can have if they want it. And now is the time to get it.” The Anatomy of Peace by Emery Reves, first published in 1945, is a book that expressed the world federalist sentiments shared by Albert Einstein and many others in the late 1940s, in the period immediately following World War II. Reves argued that world law was the only way to prevent war, and the fledgling United Nations Security Council would be inadequate to preserve peace because it was an instrument of power, rather than an instrument of law. “I have read THE ANATOMY OF PEACE with the greatest admiration. Your book is, in my opinion, the answer to the present political problems of the world, so drastically precipitated by the release of atomic energy. “It would be most desirable if every political and scientific leader in every country would take a little time to read this book. If this could be brought about, I feel it might avert the disaster of an atomic world war.”—Letter from Albert Einstein to Emery Reves dated October 29, 1945.




Letters at 3am


Book Description

"I'd rather have one or two of his whiplashing essays in my hands than almost any tome of philosophy". -- Thomas Moore










Essential Midwifery Practice


Book Description

Essential Midwifery Practice: Public Health highlights how public health underpins every midwife's practice by using examples and case histories. It addresses a wide range of public health issues pertinent to every midwife, including: smoking in pregnancy, breastfeeding, sexual health, substance misuse, domestic abuse, perinatal mental health and vulnerable groups, poverty and social exclusion.




Second Sight


Book Description

The human eye is only capable of detecting a miniscule percentage of the electromagnetic spectrum; we call this visible light. It is this limited perception that has defined our very reality as a species. Second Sight is the story of a brilliant young scientist who develops the nano-technology to cure blindness. He could never have prepared for the betrayal and intrigue that befell him, nor could he have foreseen the hidden agendas that lay waiting in the shadows. Michael Rose's synchronistic journey into the realms of possibility would not only leave him questioning his own sanity, but the very nature of existence itself. Neither he nor his nefarious benefactors stopped to ask: if this nano-technology could enhance the function of the human eye, what else would it see?




A Life in the Cinema


Book Description