DEVIL IN THE STACK by Andrew Smith is subtitled "Searching for the Soul of the New Machine." This text received a starred review from both Booklist and Publishers Weekly, but I initially found it very difficult to read. The prologue discusses coding and shares some firsthand experiences but does little to scaffold content for the remainder of the text. The author's intent and main argument were not outlined, although he did comment: "from certain angles, life could appear to be getting worse in eerie proportion to the amount of code streaming into it" and "the software being written by a remote community of coders was reshaping society more dramatically than any technology since the steam engine." I read further and liked learning about resources like freeCodeCamp, but struggled to embrace Smith's writing style, jumping from one, albeit interesting, interview or interaction with an expert to another. I think he was trying to tie loosely related ideas together, perhaps like Mary Roach, but her work is more accessible and more entertaining. The Times Literary Supplement review recently described DEVIL IN THE STACK as "dense, prickly and rewarding" – give it a try and decide for yourself.

I started teaching myself programming & coding last year via online classes and love it, so when I saw this pop up on NetGalley, I was super excited to check it out. I think some of the writing was a little dry - the book could maybe use some additional storytelling portions, anecdotes, etc. But I loved the ways that the author compared/correlated different aspects of computer programming with real-life situations. This is definitely one I'll be thinking about moving forward.

I've been a programmer, sys admin, IT projecte manager for ages so I was very curious about this book.
Even if I worked with different languages and softwares (sometimes it matters) I was able to recognize some of the mind processes and experiences.
It's thought provoking and entertaining at the same time.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this ARC, all opinions are mine

A deep and thoughtful dive into the wormhole that is computer coding...and somehow manages to be hilarious as well along the way. I picked up this book because I've always had a passing interest in coding, and was intrigued by the premise of looking "inside" the algorithms that writing more and more of our lives. I didn't expect to end up loving this book as much as I did, and I chalk up a lot of that to Andrew Smith's writing style and ability to present complex concepts in a way that shows us what is important to understand...and how to understand it.

This book will make you look differently at every computing-related interface that you connect with through your daily activities. It will very likely make you question and consider exactly what's going on beneath the hood, and exactly how it ended up like that (and why). And if you're like me, this book will absolutely, definitely, lead to you googling "free intro courses in coding" in the middle of the night, because despite Smith's consistent affirmation that coding is difficult and frustrating to learn, he still makes it sound like so much fun that now I really, really want to learn how to do it. Or at least take that free intro class.

Bonus points for a truly clever book title that only becomes clear once you come to understand some of the coding concepts like "the stack" that are explained early in this book.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for providing this eARC for unbiased review. This review will be cross-posted to my social media accounts closer to the book release date.

Smith provides an omnibus history and personal account of coding from the early logic arguments of George Boole to current cryptocurrency’s block chain communal data-sharing.. He wheels through philosophy, art, music, artificial intelligence [machine learning], neurology…and home appliance repair. He reads voraciously and learns to code. You can learn more than you may want to about the pros and cons of different coding languages. You’ll meet some eccentric figures, delve deep into tech giant cultures. More importantly you’ll learn where tech helps and its limitations, because the universe and its creature’s behaviors cannot be defined by bits and bytes. As one wit opined centuries ago, “You cannot legislate morality” because you cannot write enough rules to cover all contingencies.

Likewise, you cannot write decision-making schemes for unexperienced scenarios, such as a tragic self-driving car incident hitting a bicyclist with grocery bags on both arms of the bike’s handle. As Daniel Kahnemann, Tversky and Thaler have taught us, humans don’t make rational decisions and thus, our algorithms might be irrational as well. Smith quotes many others including the author of “Weapons of Math Destruction,” that some unintended, ugly consequences occur when our biases and prejudices are not questioned or held in check. We might rely on “seeing is believing” when we actually make rules based on “believing is seeing.” We ignore contrary data that doesn’t fit our models, conceptions and rules of thumb.

Meanwhile, our brains adapt to the environment we’re immersed in. And so, the author acknowledges that he’s even started to think and behave differently since starting to work on programming projects. So can machines learn, adapt, trust some intuitive feel, for example, that someone is lying in an ever-changing world? Smith explores this in this readable romp through the computing industry.

And interesting, appealing title for a book still in the making. The writer is excessively talented and brilliant, and what he has to say is absolutely compelling. It takes a while to read though, and I belong to the category of fast reader. It needs editing and more storytelling.
Thank you to NetGalley and the author for the possibility to have a go into the making of a great book !
All opinion are mine.