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Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?

• Ahmedb 7y ago
  I was about to recommend Dealers of Lightning :D
  • jackofalltrades 7y ago
    And that would be an excellent recommendation! :)
• nieksand 7y ago
  Kernighan's "UNIX: A History and a Memoir" is a fun read.
  • jackofalltrades 7y ago
    Thank you, I'll take a look.
  • CWuestefeld 7y ago
    I'm in the middle of this right now. It really is an interesting read. He's clear enough, and keeps out of too much detail, so a civilian can read it, but there's enough meat to be interesting to a techie.
• Macintosh007 7y ago
  Check out “Fire in the Valley.” It’s a classic!
  • srb24 7y ago
    agreed, also see if you can find the made-for-tv movie adaptation of it "The Pirates Of Silicon Valley"
• kratom_sandwich 7y ago
  Haven't read them, but they are on my to-do-list: "Turing's Cathedral" https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/25/turings-cathedral-george-dyson-review https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/25/turings-cathed... "The Innovators" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovators_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovators_(book)
  • CiscoCodex 7y ago
    I'm still working thru "The Innovators"! and so far it has been a delight. One of the main points of the book was the importance of teamwork. It's a great take on the idea that in the shadow of great figures, like Steve Jobs and IBM, lie hundreds of lesser known innovators.
  • wmf 7y ago
    I thought Turing's Cathedral was pretty good but note that it's mostly about John von Neumann not Alan Turing.
    • djmips 7y ago
      Turing’s Cathedral but von Neumann was the Pope.
  • Oarch 7y ago
    +1 for Turing's Cathedral. As mentioned, it's a lot about von Neumann. Slightly dense writing style but does a great job of explaining some of the key intellectual breakthroughs behind development of the computer. It's most about the 1940s-50s but it sets the historical context well (both contemporary and going back to Gottfried Leibnitz).
  • fancyfredbot 7y ago
    Turing's Cathedral is fantastic. The most enjoyable computer science history book I've read. Highly recommended.
• voidray 7y ago
  The Dream Machine is very long but IMO very good and worth the effort. Part-biography, part-history (going all the way back to the early days e.g. Turing), and extremely thorough!
• djhworld 7y ago
  Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution ~ Steven Levy The Soul of a New Machine - Tracy Kidder
  • joaomacp 7y ago
    +1 on "The Soul of a New Machine": it's one of the most mentioned computer history books, and inspired the great "Halt and Catch Fire" TV series.
  • gallego2007 7y ago
    The Soul of a New Machine is a great read! Highly recommended.
  • dbcurtis 7y ago
    That came out when I was a CPU logic designer, deep in the middle of a major mainframe project. (100K ECL, 20 BTU ton water chiller per CPU). My cube-mate and I both gave that book to our wive's and said: "Here. This is what I do."
• mhh__ 7y ago
  I haven't touched it in ages but "where wizards stay up late" is about the origins of the internet
• monk_the_dog 7y ago
  Two lesser known books that I enjoyed: 1) "Colossus: The secrets of Bletchley Park's code-breaking computers", and 2) "The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal". One thing I learned from the "Colossus" book was the contribution of British engineers to early computers (Tommy Flowers in particular). They didn't get the credit they deserved because their work was kept secret for so long.
  • arman_ashrafian 7y ago
    The Dream Machine might be my favorite book of all time.
    • JeremyReimer 7y ago
      Agreed. I only found out about the Dream Machine from Hacker News (I think it was Alan Kay who recommended it) and it was absolutely the best book ever written on the topic.
  • khaledh 7y ago
    I came here to recommend The Dream Machine. Wonderful book and extremely well written.
• TruffleLabs 7y ago
  The Computer History Museum has lots of history on line https://computerhistory.org/ https://computerhistory.org/
  • rjsw 7y ago
    The articles that I have read could use some editing, I'm guessing they were transcribed from audio recordings by people who were not computer experts.
• racl101 7y ago
  https://www.folklore.org/ https://www.folklore.org/ has pretty good yarns about the people who worked on the original Macintosh.
• SaxonRobber 7y ago
  Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software One of my favorite books, it covers everything from braille to microprocessors. A great book for anyone interested in technology.
• drej 7y ago
  Code is excellent, Innovators are immersive, the Code Book is brilliant, albeit less about computer history and more about cryptography in general (all books by simon Singh are super interesting).
• Impossible 7y ago
  Racing the Beam https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/racing-beam https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/racing-beam Wolfenstein Black Book http://fabiensanglard.net/gebbwolf3d/ http://fabiensanglard.net/gebbwolf3d/ Doom Black Book http://fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/ http://fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/ Platform studies book series in general cover a lot of this https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/series/platform-studies https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/series/platform-studies.
  • gxqoz 7y ago
    The NES book in the Platform Studies series (I Am Error) is the best of the lot, although they're pretty good (particularly Racing the Beam). https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/9805921.Nathan_Altice https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/9805921.Nathan_Altice
    • Impossible 7y ago
      Thanks, I've only read Racing the Beam but I've been meaning to check out some of the other ones. I'll start with that one.
• dstein64 7y ago
  Out of their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists https://cs.nyu.edu/shasha/outofmind.html https://cs.nyu.edu/shasha/outofmind.html
• bryananderson 7y ago
  I'm really enjoying "The Code" by Margaret O'Mara, which is specifically a history of Silicon Valley. It's not particularly technical, but the history is fascinating. O'Mara does a great job of presenting a nuanced view of the different factors that formed Silicon Valley as we know it: entrepreneurship, academia, defense. Defense in particular is usually omitted from the narrative, but has been a crucial ingredient from the start.
• pjmorris 7y ago
  "Programmers At Work" by Susan Lammers was a great read in its time, and I keep referring to ideas from it. Might be worth a look. Peter Seibel's done a great job with continuing the idea, e.g. "Coders At Work", "Founders At Work." Is it time to read "Godel, Escher, Bach?"
  • Agathos 7y ago
    Gamers at Work is also great if you're curious about the early days of the games industry. The discussions focus on the business side, so it reads more like Founders than like Coders. Interesting to see where some of today's giants began.
• Aaronstotle 7y ago
  The Information: a History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick is great. Starts with Ada Lovelace/Charles Babbage and goes on from there, I found it fascinating.
  • ellius 7y ago
    Seconded, this is a really excellent book.
  • westurner 7y ago
    "The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood" starts with "1 | Drums That Talk" re: African drum messaging; a complex coding scheme: > Here was a messaging system that outpaced the best couriers, the fastest horses on good roads with way stations and relays. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Information:_A_History,_a_Theory,_a_Flood https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Information:_A_History,_a_... https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8701960-the-information https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8701960-the-information From "Polynesian People Used Binary Numbers 600 Years Ago" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/polynesian-people-used-binary-numbers-600-years-ago/ https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/polynesian-people... : > Binary arithmetic, the basis of all virtually digital computation today, is usually said to have been invented at the start of the eighteenth century by the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz. But a study now shows that a kind of binary system was already in use 300 years earlier among the people of the tiny Pacific island of Mangareva in French Polynesia.
• sien 7y ago
  The Friendly Orange Glow : The Untold Story of the PLATO system and the dawn of cyberculture (2017) is a really interesting book about a system few people here would probably have heard of. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34373814-the-friendly-orange-glow https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34373814-the-friendly-or... How the Internet Happened is very good. The podcast that was created while writing the book is also worth a listen. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38212134-how-the-internet-happened https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38212134-how-the-interne... Accidental Empires is also very good https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27652.Accidental_Empires https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27652.Accidental_Empires
  • homarp 7y ago
    on the PLATO book, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15784052 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15784052 has interesting comments from the author. On PLATO itself, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16615420 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16615420 While i'm at it, the book 'Minitel, Welcome to the Internet' - https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/minitel https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/minitel is about the history of the french Minitel (previous HN discussion on the Minitel - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14681561 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14681561 )
    • gxqoz 7y ago
      That Minitel book is okay, but I didn't get too much out of it that wasn't on an early Reply All podcast episode.
      • homarp 7y ago
        this one https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/8whoda https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/8whoda ? "In the early 80's, way before the world wide web existed, the French government shipped a $200 terminal to every home with a phone line, and created a service that for decades ran alongside the internet. It was called The Minitel. Producer Carla Green speaks to reporter Jean-Marc Manach, who, in the early 90's, made a living posing as a woman in sex chat rooms on Minitel. "
• raphaelrk 7y ago
  I really loved "Valley of Genius" 500 pages of straight quotes. It reads like everyone is gathered around a campfire talking about the past, and you're there with them. Great book https://www.amazon.com/Valley-Genius-Uncensored-History-Founders/dp/1455559024/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&qid=1531347283&sr=8-1&keywords=valley+of+genius&linkCode=sl1&tag=ope06-20&linkId=fc2e4a34c0d2eea0fc8204adf16aef3f https://www.amazon.com/Valley-Genius-Uncensored-History-Foun...
• Minor49er 7y ago
  "The Road Ahead" by Bill Gates is an interesting look into what Bill envisioned for the Internet. It came with a CD-ROM full of videos of how devices would be used in schools and workplaces (I thonk law enforcement too if I remember correctly). The videos are much better than the book. "The Second Coming of Steve Jobs" was eye opening for me regarding the life of Jobs, his family life, and his business involvements. "Masters of Doom" by David Kushner chronicles the history of id Software and its creators. It's an entertaining book for sure, especially the part where id has Gwar show up at Microsoft. "Close to the Machine" by Ellen Ullman is the memoir of a software developer in the 80s. I need to read this one again, but it was enjoyable. I think about one part in particular from time to time where the author recounts being offered a job to work on an aging mainframe. The man pitching the job is probably the last person around who's dedicated to maintaining it. She would have made a lot of money doing it, but the work itself looked to be soul draining, so she skipped it fpr pther opportunities "The Fugitive Game" by Jonathan Littman documents the story of Kevin Mitnick, the so-called most wanted hacker alive. Certainly has some surprises and is a fun read. Pretty much anything by Norbert Wiener regarding cybernetics is interesting from a historical perspective. I've read several but the one that comes to mind immediately is "God and Golem, Inc". While unfinished, it goes into cybernetics, which was a practice or idea that technology could interface with biological life in a complementary way and those ways should be pursued. I think he was ultimately successful since we take a lot of those ideas for granted today. "The Computer and The Brain" by John von Neumann is a great and short read. It mostly talks about how binary signals can be fired by synapses in the brain.
  • homarp 7y ago
    for the 'road ahead', I guess it's interesting to read both versions (the original edition and the 'Completely revised and up-to-date' that actually takes into account the Internet)
    • Rerarom 7y ago
      I only read the first one (I knew about the existence of the second). It's very funny how he waxes poetic in several chapters about the future "Information Highway" (not superhighway as some have said) and takes a lot of care to make sure we understand that the Internet is not it, but just a precursor.
• justicezyx 7y ago
  The Intel Trinity About the early days until 90s for Intel, having stories on Shockley's semiconductor lab, Fairchild then Intel etc. The soul of a new machine Not much history, but more on how a small computer manufacturer in 70s. It's quite relevant today, as the process very much resembles a software startup's.
• oneplane 7y ago
  Revolution in the Valley by Andy Hertzfeld is pretty good. Not purely about the technical details but definitely the mindset, culture and activities that made a huge impact on modern consumer computing.
• elipsey 7y ago
  Bentley, Jon., Bell Labs. "Programming Pearls" 1986. --Coding excercises, advice, and annecdotes about problem solving. Get up on grandpa's knee and listen to a bunch of stories about UNIX. Stephenson, Neal. "In the Beginning...Was the Command Line" 1999. --History of the evolution of UI's and their impact on people, culture, productivity, especially 80's and 90's. Van Wyk, Christopher J., Bell Labs. "Data Structures and C Programs" 1988. --D & A textbook, 80's style. Like Bently, more focus than we are now used to on things like space time trade offs, resource constraints, in-place operations, etc.
• Mongoose 7y ago
  Highly recommend A History of Modern Computing [1]. Starting with the ENIAC in the '40s through the successive generations of computing technology in the 20th century, it gives a fantastic overview of the field's history. Sadly, now that I look into it, it looks like it's out of print. There are a few copies available on Amazon, so act now! [1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/history-modern-computing https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/history-modern-computing
  • cptnapalm 7y ago
    There's apparently a second edition which goes up through the dot com crash. https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/history-modern-computing-second-edition https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/history-modern-computing-seco...
  • jonjacky 7y ago
    I think that the best sections in this book are on the 1950s through the 1970s: the mainframe and minicomputer eras, and the beginnings of the Internet and personal computers. That's all in the first edition.
• gxqoz 7y ago
  A good history of early British computing is Programmed Inequality. Gets at why that country squandered its WW2-era computing lead (spoiler alert: sexism was part of it). https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/programmed-inequality https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/programmed-inequality
• Insanity 7y ago
  some that I read and recommend: - Turing's cathedral - Hackers: heroes of the computer revolution - masters of doom (game dev history more than cs)
• Rochus 7y ago
  - ENIAC - The triumphs and tragedies of the world's first computer - Grace Hopper and the Invention of the Information Age - From airline reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog - a history of the software industry - History of programming languages Volumes 1 to 3
• RocketSyntax 7y ago
  - The Dream Machine - The Innovators
• ghaff 7y ago
  The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder. Probably the best book on product development ever written. Command Line Heroes podcast on it: https://www.redhat.com/en/command-line-heroes/season-4/minicomputers https://www.redhat.com/en/command-line-heroes/season-4/minic... (Disclosure: I work for Red Hat) Also worth checking out in this vein is Showstopper about the development of Windows NT which focuses on the role of Dave Cutler.
  • cfallin 7y ago
    Soul of a New Machine is fantastic! Also on computer architecture / story of developing a new processor, "The Pentium Chronicles" by Robert Colwell is a really interesting book on the story of the Pentium Pro, the first out-of-order CPU from Intel.
• nkassis 7y ago
  Haven't seen anyone mention these but I like them a lot: "Show-Stoppers: The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft" One of my favorite, exposes how large software project can really grind on people. Dave Cutler an interesting character and some of the connections between the NT team, DEC and Cutler hate of UNIX is fun. "Crypto: How the Code Rebels Beat the Government--Saving Privacy in the Digital Age" - Others have mentioned Hackers by Levy but this one is also really interesting. Talks about the story of Whitfield Diffie and Marty Hellman (Of diffie-helman fame) and others. "Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet" Cover the early creation of the internet. "What the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry" - If you've heard of the mother of all demos, this covers Doug Englebart and a few other important folks from the 60s.
  • spondyl 7y ago
    I can also recommend Showstoppers. One thing I thought was interesting is that Dave Cutler swore by taking his vacations on time, every time. It's a stark contrast to the "hustle" culture you sometimes hear, given how highly regarded he is at his profession
• voxadam 7y ago
  The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation by Jon Gertner
• dkislyuk 7y ago
  The Dream Machine is a fantastic and thorough history of the early days of computing, woven together as a partial autobiography of J. C. R. Licklider, though the scope of the book is substantially grander. It’s a long read, and I opted to do the audiobook option, which I found entertaining and captivating. It covers the origins of computing from the WWII days, to the early debates in the computing world, to ARPA and all of its resulting projects, Xerox PARC formation, and finally the emergence of microcomputers.
• elviejo 7y ago
  "Let it go" by Madame Stephanie "Steve" Shirley Creating a software company 100% remote 99% women In the 1960s!!!! How was it possible?? Easy "programmers" programmed flawless programs in their homes with pencil. Which would later be typed in Punch cards in the "office". She also struggled family life raising a heavily autistic son, when the condition wasn't well understood. And then became a philantophist. I think every woman in tech should read that book.
  • pjbk 7y ago
    I second this one. That book was awesome, as well as her story.
• hydandata 7y ago
  In no particular order: Sunburst and Luminary: an Apollo Memoir https://www.sunburstandluminary.com/SLhome.html https://www.sunburstandluminary.com/SLhome.html The Brain Makers https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Makers-HP-Newquist/dp/0672304120 https://www.amazon.com/Brain-Makers-HP-Newquist/dp/067230412... Strategic Computing: DARPA and the Quest for Machine Intelligence https://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Computing-Machine-Intelligence-1983-1993/dp/0262182262 https://www.amazon.com/Strategic-Computing-Machine-Intellige... The Soul of a New Machine https://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine/dp/B01FCTJCR0 https://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine/dp/B01FCTJCR0 Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution-Anniversary/dp/B017RV1I3C https://www.amazon.com/Hackers-Heroes-Computer-Revolution-An... Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/B00AQU7OFS https://www.amazon.com/Where-Wizards-Stay-Up-Late/dp/B00AQU7... Art of Doing Science and Engineering: Learning to Learn http://worrydream.com/refs/Hamming-TheArtOfDoingScienceAndEngineering.pdf http://worrydream.com/refs/Hamming-TheArtOfDoingScienceAndEn... Not a dedicated history book, but Hamming talks a lot about personal experiences and observations UNIX: A History and a Memoir https://www.amazon.com/UNIX-History-Memoir-Brian-Kernighan-ebook/dp/B07ZQHX3R1 https://www.amazon.com/UNIX-History-Memoir-Brian-Kernighan-e... Masters of Doom https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Culture/dp/B008KGXM6A https://www.amazon.com/Masters-Doom-Created-Transformed-Cult... linking to audiobook because it is read by Wil Wheaton :) Ghost in the Wires: My Adventures as the World’s Most Wanted Hacker https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wires-Adventures-Worlds-Wanted/dp/0316037729 https://www.amazon.com/Ghost-Wires-Adventures-Worlds-Wanted/... It might be just me, but I really enjoy reading biographies of people important to the science, for example here is one for John Tukey https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsbm.2003.0032 https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/pdf/10.1098/rsbm.2003...
  • madhadron 7y ago
    Hamming's 'Art of Doing Science nad Engineering' is absolutely worth reading.
• jll29 7y ago
  Agree with all posted before. Adding Clifford Stoll, Cuckoo's Egg; white it's not so much a history of computing as a personal history of a geek astronomer catching a hacker, it represents a lot of early computing culture, and I enjoyed it a lot.
  • jimhefferon 7y ago
    Mr. Stoll, do you agree?
  • madhadron 7y ago
    I second The Cuckoo's Egg. It's a great read and provides a vivid portrait of a particular point in time of Unix culture.
• johnb 7y ago
  A few good ones that haven't been mentioned yet: * "IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems " https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ibms-360-and-early-370-systems https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/ibms-360-and-early-370-system... * "Broad Band: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the Internet" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35953464-broad-band https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/35953464-broad-band * "Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer" https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1427580.Fire_in_the_Valley https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1427580.Fire_in_the_Vall...
  • Uhhrrr 7y ago
    I second Fire in the Valley - there are a lot of good Mac-era anecdotes. Hertzfeld put a lot of them at https://www.folklore.org/ https://www.folklore.org/ as well.
  • cptnapalm 7y ago
    If you haven't read it, IBM's Early Computers is great.
  • leoc 7y ago
    The First Computers—History and Architecture edited by Rojas and Hashagen
• manaskarekar 7y ago
  Here’s one that’s a hit or miss depending on your interests: The Design And Evolution of C++ by Bjarne Stroustrup himself. https://www.amazon.com/Design-Evolution-C-Bjarne-Stroustrup/dp/0201543303 https://www.amazon.com/Design-Evolution-C-Bjarne-Stroustrup/...
• didgeoridoo 7y ago
  Top five, summaries easy enough to find via Amazon: - Turings’s Cathedral - The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood - A Mind at Play - The Victorian Internet - Dawn of the New Everything Plus two that I haven’t read but hear amazing things: - Mindstorms - Dream Machine
• pjc50 7y ago
  "Racing the Beam", on the early Atari; notable for nailing both the techological and sociological sides of the games it studies.
  • pinewurst 7y ago
    Also "I Am Error" (from the same series) on the Nintendo NES - a really great book.
• contingencies 7y ago
  Underground @ http://www.underground-book.net/download.php3 http://www.underground-book.net/download.php3
  • contingencies 7y ago
    Oh and MITRE: The First 20 Years
• mr-ron 7y ago
  The innovators by Walter Isaacson. He did Steve jobs bio, Ben Franklin bio, Leonardo davinchi bio, but this is my favorite since it's basically 30 biographies in one.
  • qchris 7y ago
    I finished this one a couple months ago, highly recommended! After I started his Einstein biography in college, I missed several classes after getting caught up in it and losing track of time.
• cbare 7y ago
  The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires by Tim Wu https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/194417/the-master-switch-by-tim-wu/ https://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/194417/the-master-s... A great book on history of the information economy over the periods of Radio, Telephone, and cable TV that has a lot to say about how the longer cycles of technology play out.
  • intopieces 7y ago
    I second this recommendation and his book "The Attention Merchants" as well.
• mysterydip 7y ago
  "It's Behind You" by Bob Pape chronicles the porting of the arcade game R-Type to the ZX Spectrum. He never published it and instead created a website where it can be downloaded freely: http://bizzley.com/ http://bizzley.com/ It's a great short (136pg) read on the development processes necessary back in the day to squeeze performance out of limited hardware.
• freehunter 7y ago
  As a follow-up, anyone have any books written about the Dotcom era? I was still fairly young at the time so I don’t remember a lot of it and I can’t find any books or shows that cover it. Lots of stuff from the 70s/80s/early 90s (Masters of Doom, Cuckoos Egg, Halt and Catch Fire, Pirates of Silicon Valley), and lots of stuff from modern Silicon Valley (Bad Blood, Silicon Valley, the various Steve Jobs movies/books) but it seems like the startup world from 1995 to 2002 is just a blank space waiting to be filled. What about Yahoo and Amazon and Pets.com and Webvan and eBay? What about stock being used for toilet paper and employees wheeling their Aeron chairs home when the company folded? What about Enron? How did 9/11 impact the Dotcom bust? Hell, what programming languages/frameworks were they using?
  • simplicio 7y ago
    "How the Internet Happened" by Brian McCullough covers the early years of the internet through the dotcom bust. He has a podcast consisting of some of the chapters for the book and interviews he did while writing.
  • loganfrederick 7y ago
    Dot.con by John Cassidy: https://www.amazon.com/Dot-America-Lost-Money-Internet-ebook/dp/B000FC11HE/ref=sr_1_3?keywords=dot+con&qid=1585356330&sr=8-3 https://www.amazon.com/Dot-America-Lost-Money-Internet-ebook...
  • pilsetnieks 7y ago
    There was a Josh Hartnett/Adam Scott movie called August that's set in the dot-com boom. It's got fairly low reviews but I also don't think they do it justice. Some of the reviews seem to be about how it's impenetrable and hard to understand. For some lighter fare that others in your family might also connect to, there's Ashton Kutcher's A lot like love but there the dot-com thing is just a side plot. Also, Antitrust with Ryan Phillippe. Not specifically about the dot-com boom but roughly the same time period. I mean none of those movies are masterpieces but I think they impart some sense of the time period.
  • packetslave 7y ago
    There's "The Nudist on the Late Shift" by Po Bronson, which is an expansion on his various Wired writing from the Dotcom era. It's pretty good. https://www.amazon.com/Nudist-Shift-Other-Silicon-Valley/dp/B0000544NZ https://www.amazon.com/Nudist-Shift-Other-Silicon-Valley/dp/... You can read the first (and best) chapter here: https://www.wired.com/1999/07/pilgrims/ https://www.wired.com/1999/07/pilgrims/
• samhenke 7y ago
  "Code" by Charles Petzold is a great read. It describes how computers work from the bottom up, starting with how you can get electricity to do math. I've recommended it to people of all backgrounds, and everyone loves it.
• nprescott 7y ago
  A People’s History of Computing in the United States - Joy Lisi Rankin Joy Rankin draws on detailed records to explore how users exchanged messages, programmed music and poems, fostered communities, and developed computer games like The Oregon Trail. These unsung pioneers helped shape our digital world, just as much as the inventors, garage hobbyists, and eccentric billionaires of Palo Alto.
  • tuke 7y ago
    https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2612112367?book_show_action=false&from_review_page=1 https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2612112367?book_show_a...
  • Rerarom 7y ago
    Also read its counterpart "The Friendly Orange Glow"
• j1mr10rd4n 7y ago
  I thought Renegades of the Empire was a fascinating look into the internal machinations at Redmond and a bit of DirectX history too https://www.amazon.com/Renegades-Empire-Software-Revolution-Microsoft/dp/0609604163 https://www.amazon.com/Renegades-Empire-Software-Revolution-...
• khaledh 7y ago
  The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal It's an extremely well written book, starting from the very beginning at the time of WWII, tracing people, ideas, struggles, and achievements of great milestones in computer history. It's not your typical dry historical material, but somehow the author made it personal through the eyes of key people that influenced important computer science progresses, and in particular J.C.R. Licklider (Lick), who galvanized a lot efforts across the U.S. in the sixties that resulted in making computing interactive and ultimately personal, rather than batch and business-focused. Many important milestones are discussed, starting with the early days of mechanical computers, vacuum tubes, relays, ENIAC, UNIVAC, through MIT's various efforts during the cold war to help with real-time computing with Whirlwind and the SAGE project; IBM's mainframes dominance in the fifties, and the hacker culture that arose against it at MIT to build interactive computers like the TX-0 and TX-2, to the spin-off of DEC and its minicomputers that changed the game; to building time-sharing systems, and the groundbreaking inventions of Douglas Engelbart and his team at SRI; the rise of the ARPA network; the many great ideas developed at Xerox PARC; and ultimately the personal computer revolution and the Internet.
  • fragmede 7y ago
    I will warn that it starts off pretty dry and slow but it all comes together in the end and I am so glad I pushed all the way through.
  • jakkals 7y ago
    I borrowed this book from the library, but before I finished it I bought it, I liked it that much. In short, I very much agree with this recommendation.
• mitchelldeacon9 7y ago
  The following is a list of my favorite books on software engineering, cyber-security, and the history of IT business development. Bowden, Mark (2011) Worm: The First Digital World War Brooks, Frederick (1995) Mythical Man-Month, 2nd ed. Christensen, Clayton (1997) Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail Hafner, Katie and Matthew Lyon (1996) Where Wizards Stay Up Late: Origins of the Internet Hunt, Andrew and David Thomas (1999) Pragmatic Programmer MacCormick, John (2012) Nine Algorithms that Changed the Future McConnell, Steve (2004) Code Complete, 2nd ed. Mitnick, Kevin and William Simon (2002) Art of Deception Poulsen, Kevin (2011) Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cyber-Crime Underworld Raymond, Eric (2003) Art of Unix Programming Stone, Brad (2013) The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon Torvalds, Linus and David Diamond (2001) Just for Fun: Story of an Accidental Revolutionary Wallace, James and Jim Erickson (1992) Hard Drive: Bill Gates and Making of the Microsoft Empire Williams, Sam (2002) Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software Wilson, Mike (1996) The Difference between God and Larry Ellison: Inside Oracle Corp
• odie88 7y ago
  A lot of great books are already mentioned. I also enjoyed "Masterminds of Programming: Conversations With The Creators Of Major Programming Languages" [0] It's a collection of interviews with creators of languages (FORTH, C++, Python, Haskell, and many more) You learn a lot about language design decisions and their pitfalls. And a shameless plug: I shared MapFilterFold as a Show HN earlier, a project that collects recommendations from Ask HN threads. Browsing the books tagged computer science might yield some interesting results[1] [0] https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596515170/ https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0596515170/ [1] https://mapfilterfold.com/books/?genre=computer%20science https://mapfilterfold.com/books/?genre=computer%20science
• mesaframe 7y ago
  The Annotated Turing Machine It tells about history of Turing Machine and explains Turing's paper.
• eyegor 7y ago
  Code: the hidden language of computer hardware and software, by Charles Petzold. It's a modern classic (2000). It's less technical and more about the history behind the idea/theories of coding itself. It also explains some basic principles of how computers work, at a high level. Very well written.
  • fossuser 7y ago
    I also think it's a great book, but partly because it is technical. Charles is great at explaining how computers actually work with circuit diagrams from the ground up in a way that's articulate, clear, and engaging. I think I learned more from this book than I did in my CS architecture class. The historical context he puts it in helps with clarity since it's easier to understand when you know how each successive step built on the previous one. In addition to the Dream Machine, I'd also mention Steven Levy's Hackers as an obvious one to read. Some others I've read: - What the dormouse said (this one was just okay, but interesting to see some of the cultural context at the time). - Crypto (about the history of cryptography). I really liked this one, but people I've recommended it to found it dry. - In the Plex (history of Google) - Masters of Doom (John Carmack, John Romero and Id Software) Related Fiction: - Microserfs - The Soul of a New Machine - The Phoenix Project (fiction paired with the Dev Ops Handbook)
    • madhadron 7y ago
      If you're going to read the Phoenix Project, skip it and go back to Goldratt's 'The Goal'. And take it with a grain of salt.
      • fossuser 7y ago
        The Phoenix project was inspired in part by the goal - I think it's still good and the software focus makes it more fun to read if you're in software.
        • madhadron 7y ago
          Sure, just don't expect it to apply in reality.
• pmcjones 7y ago
  http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/FORTRAN/ http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/FORTRAN/ http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/ http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/LISP/ http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/ http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/ALGOL/ http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/c_plus_plus/ http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/c_plus_plus/ http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/prolog/ http://www.softwarepreservation.org/projects/prolog/
• netsharc 7y ago
  20 years ago I downloaded a text version of the Jargon File [1] and read it back to front. It wasn't dry at all and gave me an insight into the 60's/70's Silicon Valley hacker culture... [1] I don't know where I got it 20 years ago but DDGing gave me https://jargon-file.org/archive/ https://jargon-file.org/archive/
• cptnapalm 7y ago
  IBM's Early Computers and IBM's 360 and Early 370 Systems. They are an incredible wealth of information for the research, design and implementations of early computers. Been aching to know about how the different transistors were developed, by whom and what their benefits and drawbacks were? It's all in these two.
• dntbnmpls 7y ago
  There was a HN post a while back about "Unix: A History and a Memoir, by Brian Kernighan". It also has a lot of good recommendations in the comment section. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21373800 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21373800
• mjn 7y ago
  Two on AI history: Pamela McCorduck's Machines Who Think, either the 1979 original edition, or the 2004 2nd ed, which adds a 100-page afterword covering 1979–2004. Nils Nilsson's The Quest for Artificial Intelligence (2009). They have somewhat different styles and focuses. McCorduck is a writer (of popular science and sci-fi), while Nilsson was an AI researcher. Which isn't to say that McCorduck lacks knowledge about AI or that Nilsson can't write, but their backgrounds are noticeable in how the books are organized and written.
• n_t 7y ago
  1. UNIX: A History and a Memoir 2. The Supermen: The Story of Seymour Cray and the Technical Wizards Behind the Supercomputer 3. The idea factory - Bell Land and the great age of American innovation 4. Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age 5. The Chip: How Two Americans Invented the Microchip and Launched a Revolution 7. Intel Trinity,The: How Robert Noyce, Gordon Moore, and Andy Grove Built the World's Most Important Company 8. The Dream Machine 9. The Soul of a new machine
  • japhyr 7y ago
    +1 UNIX: A History and a Memoir I read it after seeing a recommendation here, and I've been recommending it ever since. I loved reading the early history of the development of UNIX and all the command line tools we use on a regular basis. The history was wonderful to read, and it made me a little better at the command line as well.
• NateEag 7y ago
  If you want to learn about the proto-history of the computer, a graphic novel called "The Thrilling Adventures Of Lovelace And Babbage" is well worth your time. The comic itself is pure fiction of a zany cartoon comedy variety. The writer is obsessed with the actual history, though, to a point where her footnotes sometimes take as much space on the page as comic panels. It's a glorious thing and provides more insight into who Babbage and Lovelace really were than anything else I've personally read. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thrilling_Adventures_of_Lovelace_and_Babbage https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Thrilling_Adventures_of_...
• billfruit 7y ago
  Computer Architecture: Concepts and Evolution by Fred Brooks, Etc is a comprehensive look into the evolution of computer architecture.
  • cptnapalm 7y ago
    I had not heard of this one, somehow. Will certainly put it on my reading list. Thanks.
• occamschainsaw 7y ago
  The Innovators by Walter Isaacson looks at the different eras in the history of computing, from Ada Lovelace, looms to transistors and microchips to the development of the web. It's a fun read with emphasis on both the technology and the people behind it.
• acd 7y ago
  UNIX: A History and a Memoir by Brian Kernighan. UNIX is the predecessor to Linux/BSD and was created at Bell laboratories. Also C was created there. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Unix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Unix https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unix_philosophy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_%28programming_language%29 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C_%28programming_language%29 "Make each program do one thing well. To do a new job, build afresh rather than complicate old programs by adding new "features"." One could say Micro services is a form that, do one thing and do it well.
• fellellor 7y ago
  "The Annotated Turing" by Charles Petzold is an in depth look into the seminal paper by Claude Shannon that started this whole "tech" thing.
  • leg100 7y ago
    I think you might have gotten that wrong...
• joshberetta 7y ago
  The Innovators by Walter Isaacson is one of my favourites.
• reverendbyte 7y ago
  James Cortada's books --> Before the computer --> The Digital Hand (Vol 1,2,3) - Real great detail Also Paul Cerruzzi has written in depth on computing history I seem to recall there is also some special history group over on acm.org
• bachmeier 7y ago
  Sophistication & Simplicity: The Life & Times of the Apple II Computer https://apple2history.org/book/ https://apple2history.org/book/ Not technically a book (I think that was the original plan) but there are significant interviews on the History of Numerical Analysis and Scientific Computing http://history.siam.org/oralhistories.htm http://history.siam.org/oralhistories.htm
• Rerarom 7y ago
  Curious that "The Cathedral and the Bazaar" by Eric S. Raymond hasn't been mentioned yet. Also: Logicomix, about the development of modern logic up to Gödel.
• cpach 7y ago
  Lots of good recommendations in this thread. Here’s some more: • Turner, Fred (2006) From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism • Slatalla, Michelle & Quittner, Joshua (1995) Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace • Schlender, Brent & Tetzeli, Rick (2015) Becoming Steve Jobs: The Evolution of a Reckless Upstart into a Visionary Leader • Isaacson, Walter (2011) Steve Jobs This one might also be worth lookin in to: Hertzfeld, Andy (2004) Revolution in the Valley: The Insanely Great Story of How the Mac Was Made I haven’t read it in book form but AFAICT the contents of the book are also available over at https://www.folklore.org/ https://www.folklore.org/ By the way, you might also want to have a look at this project someone published recently: Meta book recommendations from Ask HN threads https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22693634 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22693634
• lord5et 7y ago
  "The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation" by Jon Gertner.
  • oizin 7y ago
    I second this, so interesting to learn about all the characters that went through Bell Labs and the variety of things they worked on.
• op03 7y ago
  Jacquard's Web: How a Hand-Loom Led to the Birth of the Information Age.
• di4na 7y ago
  Programmed Inequality by Mar Hicks, https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/programmed-inequality https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/programmed-inequality On the history of women in programming in Britain and how they got discarded from the profession.
• PaulAJ 7y ago
  * Alan Turing: The Enigma of Intelligence by Andrew Hodges. The definitive biography, with lots of detailed explanations of his work. * Making Software, edited by Oram & Wilson. A bunch of papers about evidence-based software engineering. * Beautiful Code, also edited by Oram & Wilson. A bunch of papers about especially elegant pieces of software. * Eiffel, by Bertrand Meyer. What Java should have been. * The Devil's DP Dictionary, by Stan Kelly Bootle. A satirical look at the computer industry circa 1980. * The Jargon File. (http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/ http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/). The language of the Elder Days. * Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering by Robert Glass. * The Pragmatic Programmer by Hunt & Thomas.
• RMPR 7y ago
  I wonder why Free as in freedom, Sam Williams Wasn't mentioned (maybe it's too recent?), the book is written as biographical snapshots of Richard Stallman, basically the story of the Free software, I think it's a great complement for The Cathedral and the Bazaar which was already mentioned.
  • RMPR 7y ago
    Something I also liked as far as history is concerned: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20797521 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20797521 while it's not a formal book, it covers the motivation and some nitty gritty stuff you might find useful.
• coleca 7y ago
  Since Show Stopper was already mentioned and I didn't see this one mentioned, so I'll throw this one out there: Fatal Defect by Ivars Peterson https://www.amazon.com/Fatal-Defect-Chasing-Killer-Computer/dp/0679740279 https://www.amazon.com/Fatal-Defect-Chasing-Killer-Computer/... It's a few stories about the impact software bugs can have on real life. For example, the THERAC-25 bug that literally killed people. It's been eons since I read the book, but I recall a passage about how computer scientists had been so opposed to Reagan's Star Wars program, Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), not because it's a war machine, but because it was so complex that there would be no way to be sure it was bug free. I'm sure it was more nuanced than that but that's my 20+ year recollection of that part of the book.
• faitswulff 7y ago
  Not a book, but Oxide Computing's podcast, "On the Metal" interviews a lot of interesting people in computing: https://oxide.computer/podcast/ https://oxide.computer/podcast/ I found it both entertaining and informative and if you're looking for something to kill time while you exercise, this is a good option.
• amatic 7y ago
  I've enjoyed "The Analogue Alternative: The Electronic Analogue Computer in Britain and USA, 1930-1970", By James S. Small. Really got me thinking about the possibility of forgotten ideas from that space.
• pjbk 7y ago
  Since these have not been mentioned already: * Brian Bagnall trilogy on the history of Commodore/Amiga: http://variantpress.com http://variantpress.com * Severo Ornstein's "Computing in the Middle Ages", about how it used to be a professional programmer back in the early days. You can find his CHM oral history interview at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q243lfVdQ9E https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q243lfVdQ9E. * "Stan Veit's History of the Personal Computer". A candid view about how the PC industry unfolded. * "Introduction to Algorithms" by Udi Manber. IMHO one of the best books about how to approach problems with a programmer's mindset.
• CJefferson 7y ago
  These are going to seem a bit strange, as they don't go that far into history, but I found the really interesting in showing how projects grow and evolve over time. The Design and Evolution of C++ by Bjarne Stroustrup: This book is quite old itself now, but it talks about the early days of C++, and does a good job of describing how we ended up with the language we did. The Old New Thing, Practical Development Throughout the Evolution of Windows by Raymond Chen. You can also read lots of the parts of this book on Raymond's blog, of the same name. This book really gave me a lot more respect for Windows and Microsoft on a technical level, giving many small fun stories on how functionality evolves over time, and how sensible decisions cause pain 10 years later.
• robotbikes 7y ago
  I really enjoyed "What the Dormouse Said" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/What_the_Dormouse_Said it was about how the 60s counter culture interacted with the personal computer industry being formed, so a lot of computer science interwoven with politics.
• pmcjones 7y ago
  Metropolis, N., J. Howlett, and Gian-Carlo Rota, A History of Computing in the Twentieth Century, Academic Press, 1980. https://www.amazon.com/History-Computing-Twentieth-Nicholas-Metropolis/dp/0124916503 https://www.amazon.com/History-Computing-Twentieth-Nicholas-... This is based on papers presented at a 1976 conference by many of the original pioneers.
• noobdood 7y ago
  I second some of the ones others have mentioned, e.g. like Soul of a New Machine,the Hackers book by Levy, the 2 Programming Pearls books by Jon Bentley, etc. Bentley also wrote a less-often-mentioned gem of a book: Writing Efficient Programs. It is about performance tuning of programs at many levels, micro to macro.
• jonjacky 7y ago
  Computer: A History of the Information Machine by Martin Campbell-Kelly and William Aspray. Good on prehistory: pre-computer data processing in the 19th and early 20th centuries -- there was a lot of it! --- the founding and early history of IBM and the computer industry etc. Computer Power and Human Reason by Joseph Weizenbaum. From 1976. Not exactly a history, but now of historical interest as the first thorough ethical and humanist critique of computing and AI, by the MIT computer scientist who wrote the original Eliza program. The chapter on the hacking culture at MIT has been widely quoted and was one of the first popular accounts of that scene. Computer Lib/Dream Machines by Ted Nelson. From 1974. Another book now of historical interest. Self-published, with a DIY look similar to its contemporary Whole Earth Catalog. Along with advocacy ("You can and must understand computers now!") it is also an opinionated survey of the computing world right before the personal computer appeared. Nelson is now best known as the author of the Xanadu hypertext proposal, which does get a few pages here, but I think this book might be his most influential contribution.
• feydaykyn 7y ago
  "Dreaming in code" by Scott Rosenberg It tells the story of a software team which has everything, money, talent, time... but doesn't find how to materialize their idea. I've kept the warning in mind ever since http://www.dreamingincode.com/ http://www.dreamingincode.com/
• blueyes 7y ago
  Fire in the Valley: The Making of the Personal Computer High Stakes, No Prisoners - history of the birth of the Internet written by the founder of FrontPage, with a keen critique of Netscape's history - Charles Ferguson Computer Wars - a look at the decline of IBM by the early 90s - Charles Ferguson Valley of Genius: The Uncensored History of Silicon Valley - An oral history of the Valley in the 80s and 90s.