Ask HN: What are some great posts or articles about history of computing? • Hacker News Board

Re: Ask HN: What are some great posts or articles about history of computing?

#81

Post by zeckalpha » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 9:59 PM UTC

http://www.cbi.umn.edu

Re: Ask HN: What are some great posts or articles about history of computing?

#82

Post by rrwright » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 10:07 PM UTC

awsanswers wrote: post #46

James Gleick - "The Information" pop sci about theory of information and information systems at large. Starting from "0 & 1"

I strongly agree with this recommendation. And though it isn’t meant to be related, I think of “Decoding Reality” by Vlatko Vedral as being a spiritual successor and deeper dive into information theory (from a theoretical physicist’s point of view).

Re: Ask HN: What are some great posts or articles about history of computing?

#83

Post by mtreis86 » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 10:14 PM UTC

I am reading Colossus: The Secrets of Bletchley Park's Codebreaking Computers. https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/98610.Colossus

Re: Ask HN: What are some great posts or articles about history of computing?

#84

Post by pjc50 » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 10:17 PM UTC

"Racing the Beam", on the technical history of early Atari games. It also does a great job of contextualising them in the social history of the time and the company.

Re: Ask HN: What are some great posts or articles about history of computing?

#85

Post by messede » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 10:20 PM UTC

Some internet stories from the past:

https://dbrgn.ch/stories-from-the-internet.html

Re: Ask HN: What are some great posts or articles about history of computing?

#86

Post by Animats » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 10:27 PM UTC

The EDVAC report

"Thunks"

Re: Ask HN: What are some great posts or articles about history of computing?

#87

Post by luzer7 » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 10:29 PM UTC

peter5878 wrote: post #18

Not an article, but Kirk McKusick (a very longtime developer of BSD) gave a few talks on BSD and UNIX history (and the beginnings of TCP/IP), which are on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVSXXeiFLgk If you prefer text, you can find it in Chapter 1 of his book "The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System": https://www.amazon.com/Design-Implementation-FreeBSD-Operati... (the chapter seems to…

Thanks, looks very interesting.

Re: Ask HN: What are some great posts or articles about history of computing?

#88

Post by AndrewOMartin » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 10:48 PM UTC

A Brief, Incomplete, and Mostly Wrong History of Programming Languages

1964 - John Kemeny and Thomas Kurtz create BASIC, an unstructured programming language for non-computer scientists.

1965 - Kemeny and Kurtz go to 1964.

http://james-iry.blogspot.com/2009/05/brief-incomplete-and-m...

Re: Ask HN: What are some great posts or articles about history of computing?

#89

Post by fallat » Sat, Apr 18, 2020, 11:34 PM UTC

I did a little research on microcomputer history in China. There is very, very little information.

https://ecc-comp.blogspot.com/2018/04/the-quiet-history-of-c...

Re: Ask HN: What are some great posts or articles about history of computing?

#90

Post by pdfernhout » Sun, Apr 19, 2020, 12:26 AM UTC

See the late Michael Sean Mahoney's writings (Professor of the History of Science at Princeton University): https://www.princeton.edu/~hos/Mahoney/computing.html

I am thankful to have taken a course with him in the 1980s.