61–70 of 157 posts
https://www.amazon.com/Colossus-secrets-Bletchley-code-break...
It was used by the British to break the Lorenz cipher (which the Nazis used to encrypt high-level strategic communications.)
In 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).
History-wise, enjoy learning slowly because there's so much that even if you dedicated yourself to it you wouldn't be "done" any time soon! Some suggestions in order though:
Watching The Mother of All Demos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY
A short clip of Sketchpad presented by Alan Kay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=495nCzxM9PI
An article from the 40s that also inspired Engelbart: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m...
The Information by James Gleick
What the Dormouse Said by John Markoff
The Psychology of Computer Programming by Gerald Weinberg
Lastly, to mix up in whatever order you please, some paper collections:
Object-Oriented Programming: The CLOS Perspective edited by Andreas Paepcke
History of Programming Languages papers for various langs you're interested in, here's the set from the second conference in 1993 https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/154766 but there have been further conferences to check out too if it's interesting
Also all of the Turing Award winners' lectures I've read have been good https://amturing.acm.org/lectures.cfm
All that and some good recommendations others have given should keep you busy for a while!
In addition to the great books listed here, a few more that might be of interest: - Turing’s Cathedral, by George Dyson - Black Software, by Charlton McIlwain - Programmed Inequality, by Mar Hicks The Dyson book is a rigorous and deep historical dive into the philosophical and practical origins of digital computing, and is really great. The other two are equally great and deep but cover computing history through diff…
Whilr it is interesting, and I might finish it later, it is not something I was looking for or have time now.
I also learned some cool things, like, Einstein forbade the use of the word "god" in a wall engraving becauae people might think that he believed in god.
- Innovators by Walter Isaacson
- Code by Charles Petzold
- The Annotated Turing by Charles Petzold
- Where The Wizards Stay Up Late by Katie Hafner
- The Information by James Gleick
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Machine_That_Changed_the_W...
is out of print, but can be found intermittently on youtube.
I love the coverage of 1940's computing, with interviews with several of the surviving people:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Konrad_Zuse
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ENIAC
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eckert%E2%80%93Mauchly_Compute...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EDSAC
Currently working episode links:
1: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hayi9AsDXDo
2: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GropWVbj9wA
3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rTLgAI3G_rs
These two books helped me much already:
Programming from the Ground Up by Jonathan Bartlett - A very good introduction to assembly
Learning Computer Architecture with Raspberry Pi by Eben Upton - Great read about the inner working of memory and the CPU, with reference to the past and how things developed