Out of their Minds: The Lives and Discoveries of 15 Great Computer Scientists https://cs.nyu.edu/shasha/outofmind.html
Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?
21–30 of 156 posts
Re: Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?
#22I'm really enjoying "The Code" by Margaret O'Mara, which is specifically a history of Silicon Valley. It's not particularly technical, but the history is fascinating. O'Mara does a great job of presenting a nuanced view of the different factors that formed Silicon Valley as we know it: entrepreneurship, academia, defense. Defense in particular is usually omitted from the narrative, but has been a crucial ingredient from the start.
Re: Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?
#23"Programmers At Work" by Susan Lammers was a great read in its time, and I keep referring to ideas from it. Might be worth a look. Peter Seibel's done a great job with continuing the idea, e.g. "Coders At Work", "Founders At Work."
Is it time to read "Godel, Escher, Bach?"
Re: Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?
#24The Information: a History, a Theory, a Flood by James Gleick is great. Starts with Ada Lovelace/Charles Babbage and goes on from there, I found it fascinating.
Re: Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?
#25The 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-the-interne...
Accidental Empires is also very good
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27652.Accidental_Empires
Re: Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?
#26Racing the Beam https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/racing-beam Wolfenstein Black Book http://fabiensanglard.net/gebbwolf3d/ Doom Black Book http://fabiensanglard.net/gebbdoom/ Platform studies book series in general cover a lot of this https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/series/platform-studies .
The NES book in the Platform Studies series (I Am Error) is the best of the lot, although they're pretty good (particularly Racing the Beam). https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/9805921.Nathan_Altice
Re: Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?
#27I really loved "Valley of Genius"
500 pages of straight quotes. It reads like everyone is gathered around a campfire talking about the past, and you're there with them. Great book
https://www.amazon.com/Valley-Genius-Uncensored-History-Foun...
Re: Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?
#28Haven't read them, but they are on my to-do-list: "Turing's Cathedral" https://www.theguardian.com/books/2012/mar/25/turings-cathed... "The Innovators" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Innovators_(book)
I thought Turing's Cathedral was pretty good but note that it's mostly about John von Neumann not Alan Turing.
Re: Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?
#29"The Road Ahead" by Bill Gates is an interesting look into what Bill envisioned for the Internet. It came with a CD-ROM full of videos of how devices would be used in schools and workplaces (I thonk law enforcement too if I remember correctly). The videos are much better than the book.
"The Second Coming of Steve Jobs" was eye opening for me regarding the life of Jobs, his family life, and his business involvements.
"Masters of Doom" by David Kushner chronicles the history of id Software and its creators. It's an entertaining book for sure, especially the part where id has Gwar show up at Microsoft.
"Close to the Machine" by Ellen Ullman is the memoir of a software developer in the 80s. I need to read this one again, but it was enjoyable. I think about one part in particular from time to time where the author recounts being offered a job to work on an aging mainframe. The man pitching the job is probably the last person around who's dedicated to maintaining it. She would have made a lot of money doing it, but the work itself looked to be soul draining, so she skipped it fpr pther opportunities
"The Fugitive Game" by Jonathan Littman documents the story of Kevin Mitnick, the so-called most wanted hacker alive. Certainly has some surprises and is a fun read.
Pretty much anything by Norbert Wiener regarding cybernetics is interesting from a historical perspective. I've read several but the one that comes to mind immediately is "God and Golem, Inc". While unfinished, it goes into cybernetics, which was a practice or idea that technology could interface with biological life in a complementary way and those ways should be pursued. I think he was ultimately successful since we take a lot of those ideas for granted today.
"The Computer and The Brain" by John von Neumann is a great and short read. It mostly talks about how binary signals can be fired by synapses in the brain.
Re: Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?
#30Two lesser known books that I enjoyed: 1) "Colossus: The secrets of Bletchley Park's code-breaking computers", and 2) "The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing Personal". One thing I learned from the "Colossus" book was the contribution of British engineers to early computers (Tommy Flowers in particular). They didn't get the credit they deserved because their work was kept secret fo…
The Dream Machine might be my favorite book of all time.
Agreed. I only found out about the Dream Machine from Hacker News (I think it was Alan Kay who recommended it) and it was absolutely the best book ever written on the topic.