{"id":5736,"date":"2025-01-12T18:16:10","date_gmt":"2025-01-12T18:16:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.ackgame.com\/onwords\/?p=5736"},"modified":"2025-01-12T18:16:10","modified_gmt":"2025-01-12T18:16:10","slug":"devil-in-the-stack-by-andrew-smith","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.ackgame.com\/onwords\/devil-in-the-stack-by-andrew-smith\/","title":{"rendered":"Devil in the Stack<\/B> by Andrew Smith"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Devil<\/a>Devil in the Stack: A Coding Odyssey<\/a> by Andrew Smith<\/a>
\nMy rating: 4 of 5 stars<\/a><\/p>\n

The author, who began as a non-coder, dove deep into the culture of computers and computer programmers (“coders”). The book describes coding in simple terms as he himself learned how to write code and what the cultures of the coding communities are like. I use the plural because the different computer languages seem to carry their own cultures. He settles into the Python world and despises C. He spent over four years researching and writing the book. It is filled with interviews with iconic coders around the world and the industry. After moving through what it’s like to learn to code, he moves on to how software has changed our lives for both good and bad and describes the promise of artificial intelligence (AI) to produce even greater good and greater evil. He prefers the term machine learning (ML) to AI as he explains why he thinks AI is a misleading term. The book is well-written and readable, even for those outside the computer\/coding world.<\/p>\n

View all my reviews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Devil in the Stack: A Coding Odyssey by Andrew Smith My rating: 4 of 5 stars The author, who began as a non-coder, dove deep into the culture of computers and computer programmers (“coders”). 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