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Ask HN: Alan Kay says programing is pop culture. Where can I find the classics?
I've read Alan Kay refer to the field of programming as pop culture in Coders at Work and the following interview on drdobbs:
"Pop culture is all about identity and feeling like you're participating. It has nothing to do with cooperation, the past or the future — it's living in the present. I think the same is true of most people who write code for money. They have no idea where [their culture came from]."
http://www.drdobbs.com/architecture-and-design/interview-with-alan-kay/240003442?pgno=1
What books, documentaries, papers, essays, etc would you recommend to someone hoping to better verse themselves in programming/software's history?
- mikecane 14y agoOK, as a non-coder, I'd recommend seeing the video of The Mother of All Demos: http://youtu.be/yJDv-zdhzMY http://youtu.be/yJDv-zdhzMY I'd also suggest reading Ted Nelson's book, "Literary Machines." Another book would be Steven Levy's "Hackers." And Paul Freiberger & Michael Swaine's book, "Fire in the Valley."
- unimpressive 14y agoIf you can find it, Computer Lib would probably be good too, though it's sort of just a prequel to Literary Machines. (I myself failed at this task.)
- informatimago 14y agohttp://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/ http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/ http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/mit/ai/aim/ http://bitsavers.trailing-edge.com/pdf/mit/ai/aim/
- jonjacky 14y agoMost important software innovations, 1837 -- http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html#innovations http://www.dwheeler.com/innovation/innovation.html#innovatio... Origins and precursors, 1936 - 1982: Turing, Von Neumann, Shannon, etc. http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~christos/classics/cs298.html http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~christos/classics/cs298.html A Golden Age? 1964 -- 1974 http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2059 http://lambda-the-ultimate.org/node/2059 Significant new inventions in computing since 1980 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-inventions-in-computing-since-1980 http://stackoverflow.com/questions/432922/significant-new-in... Lisp machines, other language-based machines and OS: Smalltalk, etc. https://github.com/jon-jacky/Piety/blob/master/doc/precursors.md https://github.com/jon-jacky/Piety/blob/master/doc/precursor...
- jonjacky 14y agoAlso, classic papers 1945 -- http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_important_publications_in_computer_science http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_important_publications_...