The Kollected Kode Vicious

The Kollected Kode Vicious brings together Kode Vicious’s essays on building more effective computer systems: some of the most popular and respected essays ever published by ACM’s Queue Magazine. These entertaining and incisive explorations, written as Socratic Q&A dialogues, are complemented with never-before-published material that illuminate KV’s broader themes and offer new advice on code spelunking and other issues.
KV’s essays range from very specific coding advice to wide-ranging discussions of building distributed systems, working with difficult people, and hosting code reviews. While the topics are diverse, KV’s unifying and unique voice is consistent throughout. The columns in The Kollected Kode Vicious focus on five major areas:

• The Kode at Hand: What to do or not do with a specific piece of code
• Systems Design: Overall systems design issues
• Koding Konundrums: Q&As about things that surround code, such as testing and  documentation
• Machine to Machine: Distributed systems and computer networking
• Human to Human: Dealing with other people, including developers and managers

Relevant both to industry newcomers and those who’ve been around for decades, KV’s work offers practical and pragmatic advice for everyone who codes, works with code, or works with coders. For more than 15 years, KV has built an audience of some of the world’s most thoughtful programmers: individuals like the legendary Donald Knuth, who wrote this book’s preface. The Kollected Kode Vicious will extend KV’s insights to a far wider readership.

George V. Neville-Neil hacks, writes, teaches, and consults on security, networking, and operating systems. A FreeBSD Foundation board member, he served on the FreeBSD Core Team for four years. Since 2004, he has written the “Kode Vicious” column for Queue and Communications of the ACM. He is vice chair of ACM’s Practitioner Board and a member of Usenix Association, ACM, IEEE, and AAAS. Neville-Neil co-authored The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System with Marshall Kirk McKusick and Robert N. M. Watson. An avid traveler and ardent cyclist, he speaks several languages including Japanese, French, Dutch, and some Mandarin.

Preface by Donald Knuth 1. The Kode at Hand 2. Systems Design 3. Koding Konundrums 4. Machine to Machine 5. Human to Human