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Question about Coders at Work book authoring process

 
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Hi Peter,
Coders at Work book is interesting in a sense that this book contains thoughts from many great developers.

You also are a great developer, but no developer knows everything in every technical field.
So I'm curious that how did you come up with good technical questions and follow up questions for all 15 developers who have expertise in different domains?

And are you fully understand everything that the interviewees explain? Because when interviewing someone, if we don't really understand what he or she explains it would be difficult to ask appropriate follow up questions.

Thanks.
 
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Well, I read about their work before I interviewed them. And I've always had a pretty broad (if possibly somewhat shallow) interest in the field so I started with at least some familiarity of a lot of topics. The hardest interview, in that respect, was Simon Peyton Jones because functional programming was one of the areas I had the weakest technical background. And I'm sure there were places where I could have dug deeper in my follow ups if I knew more; if you're a particular expert in some area you may still find yourself asking, "Why didn't he ask ..." But hopefully overall I got deep enough into each area to provide something to chew on.
 
Hong Anderson
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Many thanks for the answer. I guess you worked hard in preparation to interview many skills developers from different fields.
 
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