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Ask HN: Books like Androids:The Team That Built the Android Operating System?
Hello everyone!
I really enjoyed reading Androids and the other similar books below. I found it fascinating to learn the stories behind the technology I use everyday. I've been having a hard time finding books similar to it. Does any know of any other books, articles, or whatever that go into the history of operating system, video games, programming languages, or other parts of the tech industry?
Books I've Read:
* Androids: The Team that Built the Android Operating by Chet Haase
* Blood, Sweat, and Pixels: The Triumphant, Turbulent Stories Behind How Video Games Are Made by Jason Schreier
* Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushne
* Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson
* Steve Jobs: The Man Who Thought Different: A Biography by Karen Blumenthal
- robotnikman 3y agoLosing the Signal: The Untold Story Behind the Extraordinary Rise and Spectacular Fall of BlackBerry by Jacquie McNish This Is How They Tell Me the World Ends: The Cyberweapons Arms Race by Nicole Perlroth
- michael_lefevre 3y agoThank you!
- jonjacky 3y agoThe original classic in this genre is Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder, about Tom West and his team at Data General designing and building a new model minicomputer in the 1970s. It won the Pulitzer prize for nonfiction in 1982. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine Another early classic is Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy. There is a long initial section on the early years of the AI Lab at MIT in the 1950s and 60s, then the scene shifts to California for the start of the personal computer and computer games industries in the 1970s, then back to MIT in the early 1980s for the start of the Free Software movement. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers:_Heroes_of_the_Compute...
- michael_lefevre 3y agoThank you very much!
- vclouder 3y agoWhat the Dormouse Said: How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry Exceptional book!
- TheDom 3y agoOne of my favorite genres! Any book by Steven Levy is great, he is the master! He wrote multiple books about Apple, and also about Google, Facebook,… Hatching Twitter: A True Story of Money, Power, Friendship, and Betrayal by Nick Bilton Bad Blood: Secrets and Lies in a Silicon Valley Startup by John Carreyrou Console Wars: Sega, Nintendo, and the Battle that Defined a Generation by Blake J. Harris The Founders: The Story of Paypal and the Entrepreneurs Who Shaped Silicon Valley by Jimmy Soni That Will Never Work: The Birth of Netflix and the Amazing Life of an Idea by Marc Randolph (Netflix Cofounder) I'm Feeling Lucky: The Confessions of Google Employee Number 59 by Douglas Edwards
- markus_zhang 3y agoDoes "Console Wars" mostly exam from the business perspective, or does it go through the technical decisions as well? Would love to read why the engineers adopt this or that architecture, and why this many RAM/ROMs, etc.
- TheDom 2y agoIt only talks about the business perspective, sorry!
- markus_zhang 2y agoThanks, I wish there is one talking about the technical details, but not as technical as the specification documents.
- skydhash 3y agoThe Dream Machine by Mitchell Waldrop, giving us an history about how the internet came to be centered around J.C.R. Licklider.
- lauranoure2026 3y agoI really enjoyed: https://www.jordanmechner.com/en/books/journals/ https://www.jordanmechner.com/en/books/journals/