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I'm one of those unfortunate souls who did not know about your book until now. Needless to say, I just ordered a copy, and am champing at the bit for it to arri

I'm one of those unfortunate souls who did not know about your book until now. Needless to say, I just ordered a copy, and am champing at the bit for it to arrive now. I love this kind of historical stuff. Probably the same reason I've watched all of Halt and Catch Fire twice now, and will probably watch the whole series again at some point. There's just something amazing about that era (by "that era" I'm intending to say sometime approximately in the mid-to-late 70's, through the "PC revolution" in the 80's, and some part of the "Internet revolution" of the 1990's).

AlbertCory 5y ago
Yeah, I kinda liked Halt and Catch Fire until it got into video games in Season Two. Not really my thing. The cover picture on my book actually features Dave Smith's son Jeffrey playing MazeWar on a real working Alto.
eesmith 5y ago
Some other pointers: "Fire in the Valley", "Soul of a New Machine", everything Maher has published on http://www.filfre.net/ http://www.filfre.net/ , "Where Wizards Stay Up Late", the stories at https://www.folklore.org/ https://www.folklore.org/ about the Macintosh. But bear in mind that the Mac became big, which is why it's easy to find Mac stories. There are similar stories about other communities too, though harder to find. For example, here's a 2-part story about the Amiga - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws3DJF7MbMU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws3DJF7MbMU . As a reminder, don't only read books about success, but also failure. "Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure", about an early pen-based platform in the 1990s. And there's fiction, like "Microserfs".
- AlbertCory 5y ago
  Right. On "Soul of a New Machine" check out my podcast interview of Dick Sonderegger [1]. Besides being an incredibly fun story of learning computers in the Marines during the Vietnam era (spoiler: he never left the US), he talks about knowing the real Data General guys in that book (another spoiler: they didn't have much regard for Tracy Kidder) [1] https://operationcode.org/podcast#dick-sonderegger-link https://operationcode.org/podcast#dick-sonderegger-link

AlbertCory 5y ago

Yeah, I kinda liked Halt and Catch Fire until it got into video games in Season Two. Not really my thing. The cover picture on my book actually features Dave Smith's son Jeffrey playing MazeWar on a real working Alto.

eesmith 5y ago

Some other pointers: "Fire in the Valley", "Soul of a New Machine", everything Maher has published on http://www.filfre.net/ http://www.filfre.net/ , "Where Wizards Stay Up Late", the stories at https://www.folklore.org/ https://www.folklore.org/ about the Macintosh. But bear in mind that the Mac became big, which is why it's easy to find Mac stories. There are similar stories about other communities too, though harder to find. For example, here's a 2-part story about the Amiga - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws3DJF7MbMU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ws3DJF7MbMU . As a reminder, don't only read books about success, but also failure. "Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure", about an early pen-based platform in the 1990s. And there's fiction, like "Microserfs".

AlbertCory 5y ago
Right. On "Soul of a New Machine" check out my podcast interview of Dick Sonderegger [1]. Besides being an incredibly fun story of learning computers in the Marines during the Vietnam era (spoiler: he never left the US), he talks about knowing the real Data General guys in that book (another spoiler: they didn't have much regard for Tracy Kidder) [1] https://operationcode.org/podcast#dick-sonderegger-link https://operationcode.org/podcast#dick-sonderegger-link