I was initially very excited about this book's concept: a collection of interviews with many of computer science's best programmers. Unfortunately, this book is little more than that, and I came away a bit disappointed.

The quality of each individual interview is quite good. The reader gets a good sense of the interviewee's personal story, development philosophy, and personality.

But taken as a whole, the interview format becomes rather repetitive, and there is little to tie the book together other than some common interview questions and a constant reverence for Donald Knuth.

The overall format lends itself to a reference book, but the content is more narrative. Perhaps I'm just unaccustomed to reading collections of interviews, but I sadly found the overall reading experience fairly dull and unengaging as a result.

Lastly, at least in my edition, the text suffered from a number of typesetting errors: missing words, errant spaces, and misplaced punctuation. Given the context, they should be considered syntax errors, and the compiler should have caught them!