The Joy of Computer History Books

https://fabiensanglard.net/joy/index.html

by WithinReason • 3 years ago

259 96 3 years ago

fabiensanglard.net

markus_zhang2• 3 years ago

I'd recommend The Soul of the New Machine that bugged me to really learn computer engineering.

fsckboy• 3 years ago

along with Steven Levy's Hackers

porknubbins• 3 years ago

I heard about that from On the Metal podcast a few years back. Couldn’t believe I hadn’t come across it sooner. Its really fastinating to read about computers before the internet and big tech era when the job was unglamarous and done for the love of the game. It made me sad I missed it.

markus_zhang2• 3 years ago

Me too. That era is gone. I'm sure the spirit is here but in other fields that I don't have access to.

I kinda realized that one has to be exceptional to enjoy that spirit. Exceptional enough to only care about the content of the work, not the other things linked to it.

jnsaff22• 3 years ago

It made me suspicious that the original post did not include this book.

mysterydip• 3 years ago

I'd add to this list "Not All Fairy Tales Have Happy Endings", by Ken Williams https://kensbook.com/ detailing the rise and fall of Sierra, for those curious what happened. It's obviously biased from his perspective, but I found it very honest about mistakes, and a humorous writing style that was easy to read.

EvanAnderson2• 3 years ago

Since "Soul of a New Machine" and "Hackers" were already mentioned I'll throw out two that I really enjoyed.

"Showstopper! The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft", Zachary, G. Pascal, https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/1416925

"Dealers of Lightning: XEROX-PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age", Hiltzik, Michael, https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/56563823-dealers-of-ligh...

sohkamyung• 3 years ago

Not strictly on computer history, but Cliff Stoll's "The Cuckoo's Egg" should be a good read on the historical tracking down of a 'bad guy' hacker by the author.

mrandish• 3 years ago

...and even better, Cliff is a regular poster here on HN!

marttt2• 3 years ago

Oh, I remember reading this (Estonian translation) as a teenager. First time it dawned to me that the world of computers can actually be kind of scary or even dangerous, and yet so compelling... Nice reminder, thanks!

I guess I will do some procrastination reading @CliffStoll's posts on HN right now.

jnsaff22• 3 years ago

Amazing read, super gripping real world, computer, network, spy story.

falconinthesun2• 3 years ago

+1, really enjoyed that book. I had recently read the Illuminatus! trilogy and was really amused to find the hacker named himself after one of the characters from the books.

a_bonobo• 3 years ago

If you're a German computer kid millennial you've likely seen 23, a relatively-fictional movie that focuses on Karl Koch's life and death.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/23_(film)

I've discovered the wonderful Cuckoo's Egg much later, and I was so delighted to see the 'other side' of the movie's story

TMWNN• 3 years ago

The Cuckoo's Egg

More Jimmy Maher, beyond The Future Was Here: <www.filfre.net>. He and Chet at CRPG Addict are doing the two most important computer-game projects, each for more than a decade.

The Friendly Orange Glow, about PLATO. Not because PLATO was super-influential on the later industry—far from it, with only minor exceptions—but that doesn't mean that it doesn't deserve examination.

KerrAvon• 3 years ago

“Becoming Steve Jobs” is a much better book than Isaacson’s lazy effort.

I wish someone would write more about Univacy, CDC, and Cray big iron. “A Few Good Men From Univac” and “Supermen” are fine books, but not exactly comprehensive the way the IBM 360/370 books are.

kens• 3 years ago

You might like the book "When computers went to sea", which discusses the Naval Tactical Data System (NTDS) in detail. Univac plays a big part in this and Cray has a smaller part. The NTDS was a huge project in the 1950s and 1960s to build shipboard computers for command and control, networked between ships to provide a unified view of the battlefield. Despite its success, NTDS is pretty much forgotten now.

If anyone else is interested in the IBM books you mentioned, they are (I presume) "IBM's Early Computers" and "IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems", both extremely detailed.

detourdog• 3 years ago

Along these lines. I collect Autonetics artifacts which contain a large number of first principal equations for inertial guidance.

Here is a link to some RECOMP-III which is a repurposed ICBM guidance computer being used as a general interactive computer.

https://archive.org/details/bitsavers_autoneticstingMan1963_...

I need to get my act together and get this collection on-line but here is a link that has images pre-microprocessor computers. There are 3 images of books one has some a picture of a "Typical Midcourse Navigation-Guidance Profile"

https://www.icloud.com/sharedalbum/#B0YGI9HKKGuamw1

pinewurst• 3 years ago

As another interested party, there's almost enough CDC info out there to write a technical history - documents, interviews, software and even emulator(s). Sadly, the CDC generation is beginning to pass away, though.

It's a fascinating story, really. How CDC rose to dreaded IBM rival in only a few years, then spent the next two decades failing. Even after a single decade (1974ish) it was pretty obvious where it was going - if not for the peripherals business keeping them somewhat relevant for a while longer.

tianqi• 3 years ago

How about What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry? A vivid history of Silicon Valley which is interesting to read.

ftio2• 3 years ago

+1. Came to recommend the same.

I’ve searched for every Engelbart-related book I can find, and this has been my favorite by far.

pmcjones• 3 years ago

_Bootstrapping: Douglas Engelbart, Coevolution, and the Origins of Personal Computing_ by Thierry Bardini

https://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0804738718/ref=nosim...

macintux• 3 years ago

I received a copy of Where Wizards Stay Up Late as a BBN employee when GTE bought the company. Honestly not sure whether I ever read it.

https://www.simonandschuster.com/books/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up...

ok123456• 3 years ago

"Barbarians Led by Bill Gates" gives the history of the first 15 years or so of Windows.

"Fire in the Valley" a good history of the Silicon Valley through the original PC boom.

"Exploding the Phone" a history of phone phreaking.

"Shareware Heroes" a history of the shareware scene in the 80s and 90s.

myth_drannon• 3 years ago

"Shareware heroes" is a great storytelling about the business side of indie software industry.

gonehome• 3 years ago

The dream machine, and Steven Levy’s other books (Crypto and Facebook) are also really good.

Code by Charles Petzold is mostly not about history, but it uses a lot of computing history as part of the way it teaches.

Microserfs is fiction but captures what it feels like to work in the Bay Area imo.

mitchbob4• 3 years ago

I'm reading The Dream Machine now (just got to the part about PARC), and I agree, it's very good, especially in its descriptions of the social and cultural aspects of the innovations that led to personal computing. The recent Stripe Press reissue [1] includes some of J.C.R. Licklider's writings at the end, a nice bonus.

[1] https://press.stripe.com/the-dream-machine

martyvis• 3 years ago

Crypto is a great read. Seeing cryptography progress from something that only spooks care about to technology vital for the commercial internet is covered really well and you also get to learn a little about the characters involved.

kps• 3 years ago

One I like: Jean Sammet, Programming Languages: History and Fundamentals, from 1969. https://archive.org/details/SammetProgrammingLanguages1969

And related, the HOPL proceedings, the first at https://dl.acm.org/doi/book/10.1145/800025 and the rest at https://dl.acm.org/conference/hopl/proceedings , finally freely available.

kristopolous2• 3 years ago

that's the one with the at one time but no longer famous babel tower drawing on it.

Luckily (for now) it's on archive.org https://archive.org/details/programminglangu00unse

mwcampbell• 3 years ago

Masters of Doom seems overrated. Jimmy Maher wrote the following about it in a comment on one of his posts:

It strikes me that Masters of Doom, while entertaining and well-written, suffers from being drawn virtually entirely from interviews conducted by a credulous author with no experience in game development or knowledge of the games industry, which allows hyperbole like this to sneak in.

[1] https://www.filfre.net/2020/05/the-shareware-scene-part-3-th...

shortrounddev• 3 years ago

Its a fantastic story, highly recommend the book. Theres a few factual errors in it but it's still an awesome book

JKCalhoun• 3 years ago

The book just made me hate everyone in it, ha ha.

japhyr• 3 years ago

Unix: A History and a Memoir by Kernighan is really good.

There's a lot of fun historical information and anecdotes. But, since our modern systems still have a lot of Unix ideas at their roots, I also came away with a better understanding of how to use today's systems.

sasas• 3 years ago

This book provided me a real appreciation for the innovative concepts the original UNIX developers came up with so many years ago. Their impact cannot be overstated.

Highly recommended read for anyone who happens to spend their time plotting away in a terminal.

2b3a51• 3 years ago

I also appreciated the account of the environment at Bell Labs that allowed the UNIX lab to exist and develop applications over time.

magpi3• 3 years ago

I don't have any specific recommendations, but it would also be nice to include books on the mathematicians (like Alan Turing) that laid the foundations for computer science.

AlbertCory• 3 years ago

Well, (cough), I wrote two: https://www.albertcory.io

Mine are different in that they're intended to make you feel like you were a part of it, and didn't know how it ended. Therefore, they're fiction set in the reality that was the Xerox Star and the birth of computer networking. I was there.

cfeduke• 3 years ago

"Nerds 2.0.1" by Stephen Segaller, 1999

I picked up a copy at Borders and read it over a summer. Fantastic. I still have my copy.

"Code" by Charles Petzold, 2000

There's a new edition as of 2022. I love Petzold's writing. If you did anything Win32 at the end of the 90s you probably did too.

"In the Beginning... was the Command Line." Neal Stephenson, 1999

I remember this book being fun to read. It was the time when acolytes of Stallman ran amok and Windows was doomed to perish leaving Linux to inherit the world.

msla2• 3 years ago

I remember this book being fun to read. It was the time when acolytes of Stallman ran amok and Windows was doomed to perish leaving Linux to inherit the world.

Maybe I was more pessimistic, but I remember that era as waiting for the hammer to fall: Microsoft was becoming more powerful, bringing more and more hardware under its effective sway, with Linux drivers being either nonexistent or only working on a subset of what was out there. It was an era of Winmodems ("modems" that were crappy sound cards that hooked up to a phone line, with all of the modem functionality being done in the Windows-only driver) and "Linux on Laptops" being more theory than practice. Heck, a common way to get WiFi was NDISWrapper, which ran a Windows driver in a "container" of some kind because it wasn't feasible to reverse-engineer the hardware and do it right.

And later there was Palladium, and the spectrum of boot signing locking out all non-Windows OSes forever, on pains of legal prosecution.

It's much better now, even in the x86 world.

bombcar2• 3 years ago

It was really the era of "Linux on the Desktop" - for some reason everyone assumed the war would be fought there, on the desktop, against Windows 98 and successors.

But Linux just absolutely destroyed everyone and everything in the server world which became huge with the explosion of the WWW. And servers just needed a CPU, memory, disk, and an ethernet card.

RyanShook• 3 years ago

Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet https://amzn.to/3G8bAnH

naves3• 3 years ago

+1 on this book. It made me realize how brittle ARPANET (and the internet, by extension) was at its inception

netman21• 3 years ago

Security Yearbook 2022, the only history of the IT security industry. There are great books on encryption of course, and many books on attacks (SandWorm, Zero Day), but this book tracks the development of the companies that make the products.

FlyingBears• 3 years ago

Nice try. Last time I tried computer history books, it turned into a 20 year career. I am not falling for that again …

maheart• 3 years ago

Another couple of recommendations:

* Fumbling the Future: How Xerox Invented, Then Ignored, the First Personal Computer

* Steve Jobs & the Next Big Thing (covers NeXT, and a little bit of Sun history)

sonabinu• 3 years ago

Machines Who Think: A Personal Inquiry Into the History and Prospects of Artificial Intelligence by Pamela McCorduck

Go To by Steve Lohr

jccalhoun• 3 years ago

For the last few years I've been collecting computer history books that I get at used book stores. Unfortunately, I have more just collected than read them, but I did read and enjoy Steve Jobs and the NeXT Big Thing and Gates: How Microsoft's Mogul...

naves3• 3 years ago

Steve Jobs & the Next Big is a great read with tons of context about the tech world at the end of the 80’s/beginning of the 90s. Also, a candid view on Jobs’ reality distortion field.

mitchbob4• 3 years ago

Turing's Cathedral: The Origins of the Digital Universe by George Dyson [1] [2] is quite a read. The brilliance of John von Neumann is on full display, not least his brilliance in gathering amazingly talented people for one of the most ambitious projects ever--the creation of a stored-program computer--and creating the kind of community and sense of purpose that scarcely exists in our current world of commercialized technology.

[1] https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/44425/turings-cathe...

[2] NY Times review: https://www.nytimes.com/2012/05/06/books/review/turings-cath... Archived: https://archive.ph/p78bK

dang• 3 years ago

Looks like we only had one thread with a comment:

Interview with *Turing Cathedral* author George Dyson - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4824897 - Nov 2012 (1 comment)

kristopolous2• 3 years ago

Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure By Jerry Kaplan

Only the Paranoid Survive By Andrew Grove

Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgment to Calculation by Joseph Weizenbaum

I'm the guy that wrote https://siliconfolklore.com/internet-history/ so that gives a bit of context to my recommendations.

robjwells• 3 years ago

Christophe Lécuyer’s Making Silicon Valley is excellent.

https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262622110/making-silicon-valley...

It’s about the development of high-tech industry in the valley generally, starting with vacuum tube manufacturers in the 1930s and ending up with Fairchild and other chip firms in the 1970s. Highly recommended.

marttt2• 3 years ago

Not books, but Jason Scott's documentaries on the history of BBSes, text adventures and Infocom were really interesting:

Get Lamp: The Text Adventure Documentary (2010): https://yewtu.be/watch?v=zEJXZ2wnO3w

Infocom: The Documentary: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=OXNLWy7rwH4

BBS: The Documentary (2005): https://yewtu.be/playlist?list=PL7nj3G6Jpv2G6Gp6NvN1kUtQuW8Q...

LeonM• 3 years ago

I can't believe nobody mentioned iWoz here. To me, it's the perfect blend between a biography and hacker story. I read it when I was younger (must have been 16, I think?) and it definitely influenced me into the engineer I became later. Can recommend!

maxshm• 3 years ago

Thank you for mentioning Wasniak book! I really enjoyed iWas.

Another great book is “Fire in the Valley: The Making of The Personal Computer” (Second Edition) 2nd Edition by Paul Freiberger (Author), Michael Swaine (Author)

And I like as well a book from Merrill Chapman. “In search of stupidity: Over Twenty Years of High Tech Marketing Disasters”.

proper_elb• 3 years ago

A broader, tangential question: Can you give me feedback on this table I generated (with AI) for thinking about computing history? For context, I am a fullstack software dev of the younger variety and 3 years of experience. The table has long lines and looks a bit unwieldy due to lack of scrolling, I looks nicer in an editor :)

- Am I correct in that the Personal Computer Era is the most foundational period when it comes to stuff that I use today? I feel that if a fairy would appear and grant one the possibility of knowing two periods by heart instantly, it would be the Personal Computer Era and the Internet Era.

- How do you think about computing? What lessons are there to learn from the past?

- Other thoughts?

Much appreciated!

  | Period                         | Years                  | Description                        | Technological Advancements      | Impact on Society        | Computing Paradigms         | Software & Programming         |
  |--------------------------------|------------------------|------------------------------------|---------------------------------|--------------------------|----------------------------|--------------------------------|
  | Mechanical Computing           | 17th century - 19th century | Early mechanical devices           | Pascaline, Stepped Reckoner, Analytical Engine | Pioneering era          | Mechanical computing     | Pre-programming era           |
  | Electromechanical Computing    | 1930s - 1940s          | Relay-based machines               | Complex Number Calculator, Harvard Mark I, Z3 |                        | Analog computing         |                              |
  | Electronic Computing           | 1940s - 1950s          | Early electronic computers         | ENIAC, Manchester Mark 1, EDSAC, EDVAC | Mainframe era        | Digital computing        | Assembly & early programming languages |
  | Transistor Era                 | 1950s - 1960s          | Transistor-based computers         | IBM 700 series, DEC PDP series  | Minicomputer era      | Digital computing (2nd generation) | High-level programming languages |
  | Integrated Circuit Era         | 1960s - 1970s          | Microprocessors, integrated circuits | Intel 4004, 8008, FORTRAN, COBOL, BASIC | Personal computer era | Digital computing (3rd generation) | Object-oriented programming |
  | Personal Computer Era          | 1970s - 1990s          | Personal computers, GUIs           | Apple I & II, IBM PC, Commodore 64, Macintosh, Windows | Networked computing era | Digital computing (4th generation) | Web & scripting languages |
  | Internet Era                   | 1990s - present        | World Wide Web, internet-based technologies | Web browsers, search engines, e-commerce, social media | Mobile & ubiquitous computing era |                      | Mobile & platform-specific languages |
  | Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing Era | 2000s - present   | Smartphones, tablets, IoT devices  | iPhone, Android, IoT devices   | Cloud computing & AI era | Quantum computing       | Domain-specific languages & frameworks |

freetanga• 3 years ago

Mythical Man-Month and Tom de Marco Waltzing with Bears.

21 facts and falacies on Software engineering by glass

Not History per se but history on our discipline and how little things have changed.

sigstoat• 3 years ago

Not History per se but history on our discipline and how little things have changed.

i've been reading older software engineering books lately. the only way in which they are outdated are the mentions of tapes, terminals, and smoking.

drpixie2• 3 years ago

Not a traditional history narrative but:

Computer Lib/Dream Machines by Ted Nelson - a fabulous exploration of the optimism of the early computing era. I imagine it's long out of print but apparently available from internet archive. Read it!

Not a book, not non-fiction, but can you go past the 1995 movie Hackers. In some ways crap, but in others a great look at the period - the end of phreaking and the beginning of remote access, back when computers were real computers, and men were real men, etc, etc.

Stratoscope• 3 years ago

Ted still sells print copies, both reprints and rare originals:

https://computerlibbook.com/

There is really something to the print copy: one side is Computer Lib, and you flip it upside down and the other side is Dream Machines.

Computer Lib has a section about Three Computer Languages For You, all of which are dear to my heart.

• Your First Computer Language: Dartmouth's BASIC. Which was indeed my first computer language.

• The Sleeping Giant: TRAC Language (#POW! It's Superlanguage). TRAC inspired me so much that I invented my own language called Tamale (Text and Macro Language). This of course never went anywhere.

• Stark & Clever APL. Including A Weird Example, to Help With the Notation.

And here it is on the Internet Archive:

https://archive.org/details/computer-lib-dream-machines/

drpixie2• 3 years ago

Yeah - I've still got my copy from way back when ... makes me one of the old guys:)

It was inspiring - partly for what could be (which was the vibe of the times) and partly for what it was. I still miss the old, big, machines.

themadturk• 3 years ago

I remember passing up a copy of Computer Lib/Dream Machines at a Waldenbooks in Seattle sometime in the mid-80s, and kicking myself ever since. However, I did score a copy of the Microsoft Press edition some years later. The binding was never that good, but I still have all the pages and covers together in one place.

potrei• 3 years ago

I would suggest "Silicon", by Federico Faggin, the italian who designed the first microprocessor:

https://siliconthebook.com/

BarbaryCoast2• 3 years ago

This thread is getting expensive. ;)

I had no idea he had written this up. Thanks for posting!

stalex• 3 years ago

"The Innovators" by Walter Isaacson is great, about the history of computers from mechanical computers in the 1800s with Babbage and Lovelace through to the first digital computers in the 1940s, the transistor and integrated circuits, and the first personal computers of the 1970s.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovators_(book)

christkv• 3 years ago

Revolution in the valley is a great collection of stories fr the making of the original Mac.

falconinthesun2• 3 years ago

I recommend as well the comic The Thrilling Adventures of Lovelace and Babbage: The (mostly) true story of the first computer: https://www.amazon.co.uk/Thrilling-Adventures-Lovelace-Babba...

Very funny read with great art.

liendolucas• 3 years ago

I've read "The Dream Machine" by M. Mitchell Waldrop. Excellent and very pleasant read. Can anyone recommend other books about PARC? I'm particularly interested in the Alto computer, its development, technical details and so on. What happened with the Alto development is both fantastic and a tragedy and I guess that's why I'm so keen to read more about it.

Edit: Also while not strictly on a regular computer, I highly recommend: "Digital Apollo Human and Machine in Spaceflight" by David A. Mindell which tells the story of the Apollo's computer development.

neversaydie• 3 years ago

Yeah, just finished that one (Dream Machine) myself, excellent book. The other main one I know of is Dealers of Lightning, which centres on PARC specifically. Also quite a good book.

Another is Fumbling the Future, which discuss the apparent failure of Xerox to capitalise on their computing research (as you'll know from having read the Dream Machine, the reality is a bit more nuanced than that). Haven't read this one myself, not sure how good it is, seems well-received though.

Finally, Alan Kay is quite active on Quora these days, and often talks about PARC-related material: https://www.quora.com/profile/Alan-Kay-11 (At some point I recall him mentioning the Dream Machine being one of the best accounts of PARC's history, btw.)

EvanAnderson2• 3 years ago

If you didn’t see this recent thread, check it out: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34987658

wkjagt• 3 years ago

One of my favorites is Fabien's own "Game Engine Black Book: Wolfenstein 3D". He does a really good job at explaining how id Software managed to create a first person shooter for the 386, including code samples in C how very specific problems were solved etc. But also how the team worked etc etc.

https://fabiensanglard.net/gebbwolf3d/

spongeb00b• 3 years ago

I need to recommend Sunburst and Luminary as an excellent memoir of the work to write and test the software for the Apollo missions.

http://sunburstandluminary.com/SLhome.html

mrleinad• 3 years ago

Dammit, now I'll have to make another order at book depository for all the books y'all mentioned. Thanks for that, guys.

omnibrain• 3 years ago

Almost anything I was going to mention is already here, but I want to add "Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace"

xkriva11• 3 years ago

I add some:

It's behind you, the making of a computer game (https://bizzley.42web.io/?i=1)

Rebel Code (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/289947.Rebel_Code)

Just for Fun (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/160171.Just_for_Fun?from...)

The Computer - My Life (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/594610.The_Computer_My_L...)

Cataloging the World: Paul Otlet and the Birth of the Information Age (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18699137-cataloging-the-...)

naves3• 3 years ago

A History of Modern Computing, Second Edition by Paul E. Ceruzzi (https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262532037/a-history-of-modern-c...) is a joy to read and a masterpiece, only second to The Dream Machine imho.

He has a new book on the topic, A New History of Modern Computing (https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262542906/a-new-history-of-mode...) but unfortunately, I have not read it yet.

clement75009• 3 years ago

For a great account of the history of research in AI, from the 70s to 2020, consider "Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World".

It was very interesting for me to learn about the Symbolic approach to AI, which in the 70s was getting all the hype, while the Connectionist approach was ridiculed. In the end, connectionism is what gave us the stunning results we observe today.

Highly recommended book!

tarek_computer2• 3 years ago

I have a built a personal library and read some but not all the books mentioned. However, what I have been enjoying the most is reading computer magazines of the late 70s and early 80s period. The magazines include Creative Computing, Byte, Personal Computing, and Compute! You can still find them for cheap on eBay.

cpif• 3 years ago

I love these too. Issues are also available for PDF download from the Internet Archive:

* https://archive.org/details/personalcomputingmagazine

* https://archive.org/details/byte-magazine

* https://archive.org/details/creativecomputing

tarek_computer2• 3 years ago

Yeah, that too. However, the actual magazine itself makes you feel that you are in indeed in the 80s. It is like going to a newsstand as a young computer kid and getting the latest copy of the magazine

random3• 3 years ago

The Valley of genius

signalToNose• 3 years ago

Are there any good books about Digital Equipment Corporation?

gpanders• 3 years ago

There are a few mentioned in this discussion: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=-m6GFs3GuU0&feature=youtu.be

I haven’t read any of them myself or I’d recommend them directly, but your question brought this to mind.

BarbaryCoast2• 3 years ago

"The Chip" by T. R. Reid. Get the second edition, which updates the story with more recent developments.

A history of the integrated circuit, starting from vacuum tubes and ending with the politics of today (-ish; it's a 2020 book).

If you liked "The Soul of a New Machine", this is your jam.

mitchbob4• 3 years ago

I haven't read it yet, but Tools for Thought: The History and Future of Mind-Expanding Technology by Howard Rheingold looks very promising. The MIT Press edition [1] contains an afterword, in which Rheingold interviews some of the pioneers discussed in the book, and as an exercise in what he calls "retrospective futurism," he looks back at how he looked forward.

[1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/9780262681155/tools-for-thought/

mitchbob4• 3 years ago

Are there good books on the history of AI? A book comparable in quality and scope to The Dream Machine, written for a general audience, would be incredibly valuable right now.

jonjacky• 3 years ago

Previously here, 2020, 154 comments:

Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22692281

A few more here, 2022, 5 comments with about 10 suggestions

Ask HN: Where to learn about computer science and software engineering history?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=29770725

bear8642• 3 years ago

Can't remember what the book version's called but found <folklore.org> good about the early macintosh development good fun!

timbit42• 3 years ago

Hackers by Steven Levy

Valley of Genius: The Unrecorded History of Silicon Valley

On The Edge: The Spectacular Rise and Fall of Commodore (Brian Bagnall)

Commodore: A Company on the Edge (Brian Bagnall)

Commodore: The Amiga Years (Brian Bagnall)

Commodore: The Final Years (Brian Bagnall)

Commodore: The Inside Story by David Pleasance

Back Into The Storm (Bil Herd's time at Commodore)

The Future Was Here (Commodore Amiga)

Atari Inc.: Business is Fun by Goldberg and Vendel

Sophistication and Simplicity: The Life and Times of the Apple II computer

iWoz (Steve Wozniak)

BREAK OUT: How the Apple II Launched the PC Gaming Industry

The New Apple II User's Guide by David Finnigan

CoCo: The Colorful History of Tandy's Underdog Computer

Priming the Pump: How TRS-80 Enthusiasts Helped Spark the PC Revolution

GreenJon• 3 years ago

I really have to give a shout out to NBA Jam by Reyan Ali[1]. It was a fun ride looking at the development of not just the game(s), but the teams and companies around them. [1] https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/36597600-nba-jam

pallas_athena• 3 years ago

"Just for Fun" by Linus Torvalds & David Diamond.

I read it a long time ago and still remember "On the Meaning of Life", as given in the introduction:

Basically it is short and sweet. It won’t give your life any meaning, but it tells you what’s going to happen. There are three things that have meaning for life. They are the motivational factors for everything in your life––for anything that you do or any living thing does: The first is survival, the second is social order, and the third is entertainment. Everything in life progresses in that order. And there is nothing after entertainment. So, in a sense, the implication is that the meaning of life is to reach that third stage. And once you’ve reached the third stage, you’re done. But you have to go through the other stages first.

monk1• 3 years ago

The first Computer History book I ever read was "Forbes Greatest Technology Stories". That was more than 10 years ago.

I found it quite interesting, and I highly recommend it.

chellob• 3 years ago

What a joy to read these entries. The favorite computing history books in my library are listed below. Most of these were already mentioned in this thread I think. My all time favorites are tagged by ().

Accidental Empires - Robert X. Cringely (1992)

* Dealers of Lightning - Michael A. Hiltzik (1999)

* Programmers at Work - Susan Lammers (1986)

* The Innovators - Walter Isaacson (2014)

* The Soul of a New Machine - Tracy Kidder (1981)

Barbarians Led by Bill Gates - Jennifer Edstrom and Marlin Eller (1998)

Big Blue - Richard Thomas DeLamarter (1988)

Console Wars - Blake Harris (2014)

From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog - Martin Campbell-Kelly (2004)

Game Over - David Sheff (1999)

Hackers - Steven Levy (1984)

I Sing the Body Electronic - Fred Moody (1995)

iCon Steve Jobs - Jeffrey S. Young and William L. Simon (2005)

Kraken en computers - Jan Jacobs (1985)

Microserfs - Douglas Coupland (1995)

Microsoft Secrets - Michael A. Cusumano and Richard W. Selby (1995)

Revolution in the Valley - Andy Hertzfeld (2005)

Startup - Jerry Kaplan (1994)

Steve Jobs - Walter Isaacson (2011)

The Dream Machine - M. Mitchell Waldrup (2018)

The Electronic Cottage - Joseph Deken (1981)

The Sinclair Story - Rodney Dale (1985)

Turing's Cathedral - George Dyson (2012)

Van rekenmachine tot taalautomaat - Leoneer van der Beek (2010)

Where Wizards Stay Up Late - Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon (1996)

The Joy of Computer History Books

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