Episode · The Peterman Pod · 2026-09-14
Books mentioned on Casey Muratori: Surprises In Computer History And Where Bad Code Comes From
Casey Muratori is a video game developer and programming creator also known for his talks about the history of software and computing. We talked about surprising parts he found while digging through computer history, where bad code comes from, and his career story.
Casey Muratori discussed Notes on Structured Programming by Edsger W. Dijkstra and Structured Programming by Ole-Johan Dahl and others, and criticized Clean Code by Robert C. Martin and Refactoring by Martin Fowler and others.
Books mentioned, in the order they came up
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Notes on Structured Programming
Discussed“Say uh he wrote a a thing called notes on structured programming. It was a manuscript or monograph. I don't I don't remember what they called, you know, got like a typewritten like it looks like exactly like a typewriter written thing, right?”
Where to get it
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Structured Programming
Discussed“And yeah and Canuth did something similar. It wasn't really a flame because he had a at least when reading it comes through as a tremendous amount of respect for the authors of the book structured programming which is uh Dystra and doll.”
Where to get it
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Clean Code
Critiqued“So the reason I put that in quotes is I was talking about a very specific thing which is like literally like the book clean code like the thing where there's like here are the things that we would recommend that you do”
Where to get it
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Refactoring
Critiqued“can just include a thing that's basically like hey um you know there's performance issues but most of the time it's not a problem or something like that which is you know or if you look at uh refactoring the book refactoring very popular”
Where to get it