Mirrored Mind: My Life in Letters and Code [rare books] [Hardcover] by Vikram Chandra

Vikram Chandra has been a computer programmer for almost as long
as he has been a novelist. In this extraordinary book he returns to his
early days as a writer, when he was beginning Red Earth and Pouring
Rain, and looks at the connections between these two worlds of art
and technology. Coders are obsessed with elegance and style just as
writers are but do the words mean the same thing to both? And is it a
coincidence that Chandra is drawn to two seemingly opposing ways of
thinking? To answer his questions, Chandra delves into the writings of
Abhinavagupta, the tenth- and eleventh-century Kashmiri thinker, and
creates an idiosyncratic history of coding. Part literary theory, part tech
story and part memoir, Mirrored Mind is a book of sweeping ideas. It is a
heady and utterly original work.