---
title: "Code monkeys are people too"
url: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/2/23/code-monkeys-are-people-too.md"
canonical: "https://osherove.com/blog/2003/2/23/code-monkeys-are-people-too.html"
published: "2003-02-23T05:50:00"
updated: "2003-02-23T05:50:00"
tags: []
author: "Roy Osherove"
description: "\"Computer programming is taught in courses. The excellent books: The Pragmatic Programmer[8], Code Complete[3], Rapid Development[2], and Extreme Programming Explained[4] all teach computer programming and the larger…"
usage: "Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page)."
license: "https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"
---

# Code monkeys are people too

By Roy Osherove February 23, 2003

**Historical article** · Originally published February 23, 2003; technical details may be outdated.

_"Computer programming is taught in courses. The excellent books:_

_The Pragmatic Programmer\[8\], Code Complete\[3\], Rapid Development\[2\], and_

_Extreme Programming Explained\[4\] all teach computer programming and the_

_larger issues of being a good programmer."_

\[from :  [How to be a Programmer](http://samizdat.mines.edu/howto/HowToBeAProgrammer.pdf): A Short,
Comprehensive, and Personal Summary
Robert L. Read <\[email removed\]>\]

Finally, I feel as part of a group, having read all the aforementioned books. I must admit that Code Complete and Rapid Development were a bit on the cumbersome and dull side, however, they all have been a big help in maturing as a ~code moneky~ programmer and seeing the big picture.


---

## About the author

**Roy Osherove**: Senior Solutions Architect at AWS working on AI for production and AI-driven development; author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership, with about 20 years of consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery.

### Sites

- [RobotPaper](https://robotpaper.ai/): This blog: AI patterns and anti-patterns, AI and coding agents, and engineering leadership.
- [osherove.com](https://osherove.com): Roy's personal site. Author of The Art of Unit Testing and Elastic Leadership; consulting and training on unit testing, TDD, team leadership and continuous delivery, plus about 20 years of blog posts.
- [The Art of Unit Testing](https://www.artofunittesting.com): The Art of Unit Testing, 3rd Edition (Manning): readable, maintainable, trustworthy unit tests, plus TDD workshops in C#, JavaScript, Java and Kotlin.
- [5whys.com](https://www.5whys.com): Roy's writing on software team leadership: self-organizing teams, surviving chaos, learning mode and the Elastic Leadership model.
- [Pipeline Driven](https://pipelinedriven.org): Continuous delivery and DevOps practices: build patterns, pipeline-friendly testing, DevOps metrics and enterprise DevOps.
- [Elastic Leadership](https://www.elasticleadership.com): Elastic Leadership, Roy's framework for software team leaders (survival, learning and self-organizing modes).

### Social

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### Contact

- Contact form: https://forms.gle/jQSx5KoXvrVA1JCK7

### License

Licensed under CC BY 4.0 — reuse, quote and adapt with attribution (Roy Osherove, link to the original page). License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/