Coincidentally, this book which also titled "We Are Bob" was recommended to me by my friend Robert, a local sentient programmer Bob, much like the protagonist.

This isn't hard sci-fi like the works of Greg Egan that I love, but not too much of a space opera either. It's entertaining, not mind-bending. It isn't closer to Heinlen's work either, because Heinlen bends the mind about social norms. Time Enough For Love for instance wasn't heavy on science, but was incredible in questioning a social norm that even hardcore liberals would find to be taboo. In any case, We Are Legion was thoroughly entertaining. Personality differences between the different clones kept it interesting and that was neatly explained away.

For better or worse, Heinlen would've made him create a female version of the clone and taken it to the next level. I did appreciate that this book didn't have a romantic interlude.

I listened to the audiobook version. Voice acting by Ray Porter was really well done.

Self-replicating machines, both physical and virtual, are of particular interest to me and I'm facinated by John von Neumann's work. So I was sold the moment Rob told me what the book was about.

One of my favorite books on the subject is The Recursive Universe, which goes into a bit of von Neumann's seminal work. I'm reading Prisoner's Dilemma by the same author, which has sections that are essentially a biography of John von Neumann. He is the Richard Feynman of computing. The man designed the Universal Constructor without using a computer! I plan to learn of his work more deeply, but that's going to take me years.