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I read many computer books and magazines from the 60s, 70s and 80s. It is really interesting from many sides; some logic explanation books from that era I find
by tluyben2 5y ago
I read many computer books and magazines from the 60s, 70s and 80s. It is really interesting from many sides; some logic explanation books from that era I find better programming beginner explanations than modern books. Modern books usually skip rigid logic introductions but are more about tooling, hello world and then more examples of practically implementing working solutions with that knowledge. Which contains a lot of plumbing including logic but gives the beginning programmer the idea that low level stuff is somehow mashed in with the high level stuff. I had many juniors crash on that; they cannot keep them apart at first and worry about implementation details while the actual logic/algo basically has in no way at all formed in their head.
Even in asm books they would show flowcharts of the logic first and then try to implement those flowcharts while many modern things assume you have that global idea and jump right into the details.
I never sweat the details until I need to which seems to make me a child of those times, which I am of course.
On the flip side, these old books also discuss far more low level stuff, some to the gates level.
- agumonkey 5y agoSimilarly, vintage army videos about analog computers, mechanical couplings (hydraulic, differential) or even waves are extremely high quality. Practical yet precise enough.
- hnthrowaway0315 5y agoExactly. I found myself fascinated about these vintage army videos. Vintage training videos from the 70s/80s are also very good. Compact, effective, no bullshit, and occasionally a sense of humor.
- Enginerrrd 5y agoI also find a common theme in vintage training videos: They don't assume the audience is an idiot. I find that the more dumbed-down the information is, the less trust they placed in the audience, the more they felt complled to entertain rather than inform the audience, the worse the result is typically. I find this to be true and very relevant in modern education. You don't need to gamify mathematics. You need to clearly communicate just how awesome and interesting mathematics itself is.
- asdff 5y ago>Compact, effective, no bullshit, and occasionally a sense of humor This is just that generation. This is a good way to describe my grandfather or any of his friends.
- actionfromafar 5y agoI wonder how much of that is because of the medium. You had to film it, with film. The film itself cost money. You had only a certain amount of it on-set. You then had to wait for it to be developed to see how it turned out. You had to synch audio to it, so you had to really think about what you wanted to say and for how long. Finally, the distributed product had a standard length for distribution. (The reels sent out.)
- agumonkey 5y agoI believe the difficulty of the past enforced a set of healthy constraints too. Today everything is organic and can be "fixed later" and few really put efforts to make it right in the first place. Value is in the mass.. like architecture.
- JKCalhoun 5y agoI would suggest that perhaps the intended audience played a factor as well. I picked up a series of books on vacuum tube circuits from the 1950's created by and for U.S. military personnel and it is probably the easiest and most digestible explanation on how vacuum tube circuits work that I have come across. Wonderfully illustrated with diagrams as well.
- mintyten 5y agoWould you be able to provide any sort of ISBN or document number for those books? The older references for RF are always of great quality. I haven't been able to lock down if it's because they were created when all the original research was done, or if because generating the diagrams was more labor intensive so greater care was taken.
- JKCalhoun 5y agoLet me try to find them. I packed a lot of things in storage last year I'm afraid. I might have better luck searching online.... EDIT: Here you go (maybe just Vol 1): https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Rider/BASIC%20ELECTRONICS/Rider-Basic-Electronics-1.pdf https://worldradiohistory.com/Archive-Rider/BASIC%20ELECTRON... Also (all 5 volumes): https://archive.org/details/BasicElectronicsVolumes151955 https://archive.org/details/BasicElectronicsVolumes151955
- userbinator 5y agoNot just army; plenty of civilian ones too. Here's an HN favourite: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15122031 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15122031
- JKCalhoun 5y agoSomewhat related? "Soap Bubbles" (C. V. Boys) [1] was a book from over 100 years ago that reads like a series of lectures to a science class on the physics of soap bubbles. I was impressed with the step-wise manner in which the book proceeds from simple observations of soap bubbles and how they behave in order to develop more complex theories as to why they behave that way and the physics behind it. Logic can feel so refreshing sometimes. 1) https://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/soap-bubbles-boys.pdf https://www.arvindguptatoys.com/arvindgupta/soap-bubbles-boy...
- gotaquestion 5y agoAgreed! I have a 6502 Assembly Cookbook from 1980. It is mostly about how to do floating point math on a 6502, and it is full of flowcharts which very cleanly introduce and build much more advanced concepts in a simple way. It was a wonderful bridge for me between application and theory when I read it ... 40 years ago as a highschool student without internet.
- asdff 5y agoDo you have some recommendations of some accessible stuff and also some of the to the gates level stuff?
- tluyben2 5y agoI will check tomorrow as I have these as actual physical books. The best one I have is a Dutch book but it might be a translation; I will try to find it.