"The Idea Factory: Bell Labs and the Great Age of American Innovation" by Jon Gertner.
I second this, so interesting to learn about all the characters that went through Bell Labs and the variety of things they worked on.
Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?
121–130 of 156 posts
Re: Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?
#122"The Annotated Turing" by Charles Petzold is an in depth look into the seminal paper by Claude Shannon that started this whole "tech" thing.
I think you might have gotten that wrong...
Re: Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?
#123Jacquard's Web: How a Hand-Loom Led to the Birth of the Information Age.
Re: Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?
#124Programmed Inequality by Mar Hicks, https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/programmed-inequality
On the history of women in programming in Britain and how they got discarded from the profession.
Re: Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?
#125* Alan Turing: The Enigma of Intelligence by Andrew Hodges. The definitive biography, with lots of detailed explanations of his work.
* Making Software, edited by Oram & Wilson. A bunch of papers about evidence-based software engineering.
* Beautiful Code, also edited by Oram & Wilson. A bunch of papers about especially elegant pieces of software.
* Eiffel, by Bertrand Meyer. What Java should have been.
* The Devil's DP Dictionary, by Stan Kelly Bootle. A satirical look at the computer industry circa 1980.
* The Jargon File. (http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/). The language of the Elder Days.
* Facts and Fallacies of Software Engineering by Robert Glass.
* The Pragmatic Programmer by Hunt & Thomas.
Re: Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?
#126The Friendly Orange Glow : The Untold Story of the PLATO system and the dawn of cyberculture (2017) is a really interesting book about a system few people here would probably have heard of. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/34373814-the-friendly-or... How the Internet Happened is very good. The podcast that was created while writing the book is also worth a listen. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/38212134-how-t…
on the PLATO book, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15784052 has interesting comments from the author. On PLATO itself, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16615420 While i'm at it, the book 'Minitel, Welcome to the Internet' - https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/minitel is about the history of the french Minitel (previous HN discussion on the Minitel - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14681561 )
That Minitel book is okay, but I didn't get too much out of it that wasn't on an early Reply All podcast episode.
Re: Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?
#127As a follow-up, anyone have any books written about the Dotcom era? I was still fairly young at the time so I don’t remember a lot of it and I can’t find any books or shows that cover it. Lots of stuff from the 70s/80s/early 90s (Masters of Doom, Cuckoos Egg, Halt and Catch Fire, Pirates of Silicon Valley), and lots of stuff from modern Silicon Valley (Bad Blood, Silicon Valley, the various Steve Jobs movies/books) b…
“Speeding the net” was decent. Mostly about Netscape and their battle for supremacy in the browser market with Microsoft. Also on that topic, the movie “code rush” was decent. I believe it’s on YouTube.
Of interest, eBay started as a site to distribute information about the then Ebola outbreak.
Re: Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?
#128I wonder why
Free as in freedom, Sam Williams
Wasn't mentioned (maybe it's too recent?), the book is written as biographical snapshots of Richard Stallman, basically the story of the Free software, I think it's a great complement for The Cathedral and the Bazaar which was already mentioned.
Re: Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?
#129I wonder why Free as in freedom, Sam Williams Wasn't mentioned (maybe it's too recent?), the book is written as biographical snapshots of Richard Stallman, basically the story of the Free software, I think it's a great complement for The Cathedral and the Bazaar which was already mentioned.
Something I also liked as far as history is concerned: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20797521 while it's not a formal book, it covers the motivation and some nitty gritty stuff you might find useful.
Re: Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?
#130Code: the hidden language of computer hardware and software, by Charles Petzold. It's a modern classic (2000). It's less technical and more about the history behind the idea/theories of coding itself. It also explains some basic principles of how computers work, at a high level. Very well written.
I also think it's a great book, but partly because it is technical. Charles is great at explaining how computers actually work with circuit diagrams from the ground up in a way that's articulate, clear, and engaging. I think I learned more from this book than I did in my CS architecture class. The historical context he puts it in helps with clarity since it's easier to understand when you know how each successive ste…
Crypto is likely even better than Hackers, in fact.