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It is one of my favorites. I actually came to it via "where wizards stay up late", which I would also recommend although it doesn't have the depth and insight o
by uolmir 2y ago
It is one of my favorites. I actually came to it via "where wizards stay up late", which I would also recommend although it doesn't have the depth and insight of dream machine.
- metroholografix 2y agoWizards for me falls flat (kinda like "soul of a new machine" that's often recommended but which I found a complete waste of time) while the Dream Machine, Dealers of Lightning [1] and Norbert Wiener's biography [2] are all essential reading. [1] https://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer/dp/0887309895/ https://www.amazon.com/Dealers-Lightning-Xerox-PARC-Computer... [2] https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Hero-Information-Age-Cybernetics/dp/0465013716 https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Hero-Information-Age-Cybernetics...
- boguscoder 2y agoId also add The Idea Factory* unless you have even better recommendations for Bell Labs era * https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11797471-the-idea-factory https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/11797471-the-idea-factor...
- tedunangst 2y agoShowstopper, about windows NT, is a good replacement for Soul.
- uolmir 2y agoYeah. I think if I read Dream Machine first I would have enjoyed Wizards less. But some of the history was new to me which meant that I enjoyed Wizards for those aspects and then Dream Machine for the detailed look into why it happened.
- djmips 2y ago"The Soul of a New Machine" is not so much a foundational book but a snapshot of the computer industry and might be more interesting to someone who had no idea of the industry as I did when it was published in 1981. For me it was a fascinating glimpse into the tech industry that I would soon join, albeit in software not hardware.