“Bloomberg Businessweek released The Code Issue, a special double issue containing a single essay by writer and programmer Paul Ford. ….
Code directs the fate of everything from media to e-commerce to banking, and is arguably the most important phenomenon for the twenty-first century businessperson to understand. Yet it remains an intimidating mystery to most execs. In The Code Issue introduction, Bloomberg Businessweek editor Josh Tyrangiel writes, “Software has been around since the 1940s. Which means that people have been faking their way through meetings about software, and the code that builds it, for generations… ignorance is no longer acceptable.”
Tyrangiel says of The Code Issue, “There’s some technical language along with a few pretty basic mathematical concepts. There are also lots of solid jokes and lasting insights. It may take a few hours to read, but that’s a small price to pay for adding decades to your career.”
Chapters in The Code Issue include:
- From Hardware to Software and How Does Code Become Software?
- What Is an Algorithm?
- What’s With All These Conferences, Anyway? (and why are there so many men in this field and why is it so hard for them to be in groups with female programmers and behave in a typical, adult way?)
- Why Are Programmers So Intense About Languages?
- What Do Different Languages Do? and The Importance of C
- Why Are Coders Angry?
- The Legend of the 10X Programmer (which details the accoutrements of the coder)
- The Time You Attended the E-mail Address Validation Meeting
- The Language of White Collars
- Briefly on the Huge Subject Of Microsoft
- What About JavaScript?
- How Are Apps Made?
- What Is Debugging?
- Managing Programmers
- Should You Learn to Code?
….An animated and interactive treatment of the essay allows web and mobile readers to dive deeper into code, to manipulate it and see the results. Among the demos and widgets are tinder for code, a fun Easter egg, and a certificate of completion you can share with friends. The code for the “What Is Code?” essay has been published on GitHub.”