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Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?
31–40 of 157 posts
Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?
#32I would recommend: The Innovators: How a Group of Hackers, Geniuses, and Geeks Created the Digital Revolution - Walter Isaacson
Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?
#33So your title and comment suggest two slightly different things. For "how computers work?" I recommend Code by Petzold (higher level, good book) and The Elements of Computing Systems by Nisan and Schocken (also available here: https://www.nand2tetris.org/ ). The latter is project based and has you develop a computer starting at NAND gates and working up. It can be run through at a good clip while still learning a lot…
yeah I'm not entirely sure what I want. Thanks for these suggestions, will take a look. nand2tetris looks cool!
If you want pacing & support for Nand2Tetris, Coursera has it split into two courses. I've done the first from NAND gates to a working CUP & assembler and can testify it's worthy. Coursera loves to have content sales, so if you're not in a rush you can pick it up for cheap and have their (petty yet ego boosting) certificate of completion to read over one morning with you Cheerios (and then put away in a drawer to be forgotten). Here's the two links:
Part I - https://www.coursera.org/learn/build-a-computer Part II - https://www.coursera.org/learn/nand2tetris2
Some day I hope to pick up Part II, but Part I was still a lot of fun!
Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?
#34I highly enjoy the nandgame[0]. Its a game that goes from the basics of building simple logic gates all the way up through building memory and an ALU. While you can go into it blind expect to need to study and look up a ton of stuff if you have never had an intro-electronics course. Best of all it's a free web game.
Classes to look into. An intro course in microcontrollers would be a good place to start. Usually you will find them attached to the Electrical Engineering department. Maybe take a course in Circuits or Computer Architecture.
[0] - www.nandgame.com
Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?
#35In terms of computing history, The Dream Machine by Mitchell Waldrop is incredibly good.
In terms of "how computers work" I agree with others who recommended Elements of Computing Systems (aka nand2tetris).
Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?
#36From a NAND gate to Tetris was excellent. Informative and obvious https://www.nand2tetris.org/
The game inspired by the course is great, too: https://nandgame.com/
Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?
#37If you wish to learn how COMPUTING works not computers.... then Rosens book on Discrete Mathematics is the MASTER KEY
Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?
#38Was just showing the subject to a youngster recently. Other folks mentioned the Code book, I liked that one. The MMM by Brooks of course. We also looked at the following videos on youtube/Kanopy and other places:
- The Story of Math(s) by Marcus du Sautoy to set the stage... school and taxes in ancient Sumeria, Fibonacci bringing Indian numbers to Europe, and other fascinating subjects.
- We watched short biographies of Babbage and Lovelace, full-length ones of Turing and Von Neumann. The "code breakers" of WWII.
- Top Secret Rosies: The Female "Computers" of WWII, another good one.
- There's more history in PBS' Crash Course Computer science, than you might expect. It is great although so peppy we had to watch at .9x with newpipe. Shows relays, vacuum tubes, to ICs, to the Raspberry Pi. As well as the logic gates they model.
- "The Professor" at Computerphile is a great story teller about the early days.
- There are great videos about CTSS being developed at MIT I think, where they are designing an operating system via paper terminal and trying to decide on how to partition the memory/storage: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q07PhW5sCEk
- The Introducing Unix videos by ATT are straight from the source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tc4ROCJYbm0
- The movie/book "Hidden Figures" touches on this time as well. Facing obsolescence by IBM, one of the characters teaches herself Fortran.
- The Pirates of Silicon Valley is a fun dramatization of the late 70s to 80s PC industry. It specifically calls out the meeting between MS and IBM as the deal of the century. We also watched a "Berkeley in '68" doc on Kanopy to set the stage before this one. Interesting, but a tangent.
- The "8-bit Guy" is also great, he dissects and rebuilds old home computer hardware from the same era, and teaches their history as he does it. Even his tangential videos on why there are no more electronics stores (besides Apple) in malls is great.
- There are good docs on the "dead ends" of the industry as well, such as "General Magic" and "Silicon Cowboys."
- "Revolution OS" a doc about the beginnings of FLOSS and Linux.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?
#39Maybe not exactly what you're looking for, but Xibalba BBS (https://xibalba.l33t.codes for a web UI) hosts a ton of articles on computing history in the files section.
Re: Ask HN: Best way to learn about computing history?
#40The textbooks I used in university were "From Airline Reservations to Sonic the Hedgehog: A History of the Software Industry" (Campbell-Kelly) and "A History of Modern Computing (second edition)" (Ceruzzi). There is a brand-new update to the second one, "A New History of Modern Computing" (Haigh/Ceruzzi) that I'm looking forward to reading this summer.