NB. I was sent this book as a review copy.

From Princeton University Press

What a wonderful book! This book, made up of 26 chapters, is a look into the world of computer code, but more than that, about the interrelationship between people and code, from the good, the bad, and the ugly.

Each chapter is written by a different author, or pair of authors, and covers a massively wide range of subjects, from the first coders and programs, to the errors in code which have caused disaster, to the short lines of code which have had massive effects on society.

One thing to note is that people who are so often marginalised in modern computer science are given their voice and their rightful place. This includes the characters who are covered (including Jean Sammet, who I knew nothing about but who developed one of the most important and widely used programming languages to this day) to the LGBTQ+ community in Iran and how they used Telegram to get around the Revolutionary Guards.…