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Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?

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Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?

#111

Post by sk1pper »

In the vein of learning how computers work, osdev has got to be pretty high up there. It’s so much fun - it has become my hobby. I’m surprised no one else seems to have mentioned it.

I just finished implementing a really basic network stack for my x86 kernel, including a (crappy) driver for the RTL 8139 network card. I just learned a ton about how the internet works. I learned it all in college, but there’s something different about grappling with it directly.

And I’ve gotten pretty good at C in the meantime. I’ve also learned a ton about virtual memory, page tables, system calls, various hardware, how data is stored on disk, the ELF file format, how processes are loaded and executed, the x86 calling convention, a little bit of assembly code, just to name a few.

Check out https://wiki.osdev.org for where to start. I’m hoping to start writing some blog posts about all of this soon, to provide a resource to complement the osdev wiki. A lot of info on this is surprisingly hard to dig up.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?

#113

Post by criddell »

khaledh wrote: post #99

I have the same passion about computing history. I can't count the amount of literature I've read to learn about this fascinating history; it's very satisfying to know when, how, where, and by who original work was done to advance computing. Most of the foundational work in computer architecture and computer science was done in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. From there it has been incremental improvements. I highly recommend…

I’ll second your recommendation for The Dream Machine. Unless your vision is very good, I’d recommend getting it as an ebook. The book from Stripe Press is beautiful, but the text is pretty tiny.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?

#114

Post by shadowofneptune »

zozbot234 wrote: post #97
shadowofneptune wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Though the cathedral/bazaar terminology is influential, I am not sure reading the original text helps understand open source as it actually is now. It concludes that open source would drive out closed source software, when what we see is open libraries being much more popular than open applications. This is in part due to Raymond's own work at the Open Source Initiative. I'd probably be better for someone now to read…

> It concludes that open source would drive out closed source software Relative to the pre-FLOSS era, this is exactly what has happened. FLOSS is ubiquitous today in systems software. Many of the current Big Tech companies and business practices simply would not exist without FLOSS computing infrastructure.

I agree. You said better what I was trying to say in that second sentence. It's more that for someone new to the theory of open source, reading a 1998 essay about a Linux email application gives the wrong idea of the strengths and weaknesses of the model.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?

#115

Post by mattl »

eigenvalue wrote: post #105
themadturk wrote: post #22

Steven Levy's Hackers is a foundational work of the history of computing. Levy spends a lot of time on the MIT hackers of the 1960s and 1970s, the group that hatched Lisp, Richard Stallman and the free software movement, and also a lot of time on the Bay Area hackers that kick-started the microcomputer revolution. Certainly it's not a comprehensive guide to the full range of computing history, but it's an important a…

I second that, Hackers was a great read. I read it back in the late 90s and then again a couple years ago and was surprised how much of it came back to me. He's one of the few tech journalists and writers who actually gets it.

I read it early in life and it changed my life. By the time the O’Reilly anniversary edition came around I was there to witness some of the new interviews of people in the first book.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?

#116

Post by MichaelMoser123 »

robotguy wrote: post #7

Ben Eater's Youtube series "Building an 8-bit Breadboard Computer" is a really good introduction to the lowest levels of how a computer works: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowKtXNTBypGqImE405J2... I recommended it to my daughter when she was taking a class in R and asked "But how does the COMPUTER know what to do?"

I am wondering if it is a better idea to teach R as an intro to programming as compared to Python. I mean you dont have this whole indentation business with R...

Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?

#117

Post by bombcar »

louwrentius wrote: post #79
robotguy wrote: post #7

Ben Eater's Youtube series "Building an 8-bit Breadboard Computer" is a really good introduction to the lowest levels of how a computer works: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowKtXNTBypGqImE405J2... I recommended it to my daughter when she was taking a class in R and asked "But how does the COMPUTER know what to do?"

Offtopic: Reminds me that Ben Eater has gone 100% silent since last november (hope he is ok)

You’ll be glad to know his shop has a message about delayed deliveries dated this month.

https://eater.net/shop

Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?

#118

Post by bombcar »

SilasX wrote: post #60
naikrovek wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I cannot endorse this enough. some of it is hard and will have you wondering if you want to continue. if you do, and I highly recommend that every developer complete this course, you will find yourself thinking in new ways and understanding many problems very differently, which is a very good thing. and you will see huge performance problems in almost all software from them on, because none of this (I gesture vaguely…

Agreed. For me, the course was eerily able to hit my exact sweet spot of difficulty. Almost every project had me in the "I'm about to give up" stage just long enough before I had a breakthrough and kept continuing. >and you will see huge performance problems in almost all software from them on, because none of this (I gesture vaguely at everything everywhere) should be as slow as it is. none of it. Hah! Yes! After fi…

After reading that some huge percentage of x86 instructions are basically never used I’ve often wondered if there’s much more performance that can be gleaned through knowing what to write and how the compiler will use it.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?

#119

Post by II2II »

spogbiper wrote: post #85

The Advent of Computing podcast may be of interest. The host really strives to find accurate historical information about a variety of early computing topics. https://adventofcomputing.com/ It's also fairly entertaining

There is tremendous value in this podcast. Many histories are linear stories of how we got to today, but Sean Haas goes further by exploring many of the dead ends. Those diversions are essential if you want to understand the why, and not simply the how.

It also manages to strike a reasonable balance between being an easy listen while going adding some technical depth. For example: you aren't going to learn enough to build your own mercury delay line, but you are going to have a rough idea of how it worked and what the limitations were. It is as much a history of technology as it is of the people behind it.

Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?

#120

Post by tonfreed »

robotguy wrote: post #7

Ben Eater's Youtube series "Building an 8-bit Breadboard Computer" is a really good introduction to the lowest levels of how a computer works: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLowKtXNTBypGqImE405J2... I recommended it to my daughter when she was taking a class in R and asked "But how does the COMPUTER know what to do?"

The developer shared this on here a while ago and I fell in love with it. Super great game

https://store.steampowered.com/app/1444480/Turing_Complete/

Also in the same vein https://nandgame.com

I found that actually building things helps me learn properly

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