
Ask HN: Favorite true story tech book? - amilr
My personal favorite is "The Soul of a New Machine".
======
edw519
Founders at Work. Lots of good true stories. Encourages me to work on my own
true story.

~~~
juliusdavies
Accidental Empires: How the Boys of Silicon Valley Make Their Millions, Battle
Foreign Competition, and Still Can't Get a Date

Bob Cringely

(This book gets mentioned in Founders At Work... I think one of the Lycos guys
had read it?)

~~~
staunch
You're thinking of Joe Kraus, who says him reading Accidental Empires lead to
Excite succeeding.

Book -> Cringely -> Digitizing job -> VC -> VC -> funding or something like
that.

------
pookleblinky
Not a novel, or a single book, but I love Richard Feynman's descriptions of
Los Alamos. I can read his accounts of mental arithmetic battles with Bohr,
safecracking, the programming of dozens of old-school human computers, all day
long.

~~~
jf
Los Alamos is still an amazing place. I highly recommend visiting if you ever
get the chance.

------
wmf
The Cuckoo's Egg: a true crime hacker espionage thriller.

~~~
whalesalad
LOVED this book! I wouldn't consider myself a reader, but I literally could
not put it down once I started.

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keenerd
"Underground" by Susan Dreyfus

It is about the phreaking/BBS era, specifically the Australian scene.

The deadtree version is impossible to find, but the author has released it as
an ebook.

Download here: <http://www.underground-book.net/download.php3>

------
rbitar
Startup: A Silicon Valley Adventure by Jerry Kaplan. Recounts the true story
of GO Corporation and the folks involved including John Doer and Bill
Campbell. Been awhile since I picked this up but I remember it was a fun read.

------
nomoresecrets
"A Computer Called LEO" - story of the first commercial computer, used to run
Lyons teashops. Fascinating both in terms of computer history, and history in
general, especially Lyons' attitude to perfectionism, to the extent of doing
many things themselves, that these days would never survive an outsourcing
purge.

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Computer-Called-LEO-Worlds-
Office/dp...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Computer-Called-LEO-Worlds-
Office/dp/1841151858)

"The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder

Drags a bit in places, but is still interesting in a history type way. It's
the story of Data General building a 32-bit minicomputer in a year in the
1970s.

[http://www.amazon.co.uk/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-
Kidder/dp/031...](http://www.amazon.co.uk/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-
Kidder/dp/0316491977)

------
tjr
The various accounts weaved into The Jargon File. Gave me, early on in my
programming life, a pretty good flavor of what being a hacker was really like.

~~~
jf
Which reminds me. The Jargon File could really use an update. Any takers?

------
TomOfTTB
How the Web Was Won: How Bill Gates and His Internet Idealists Transformed the
Microsoft Empire

It portrays what I'd call "an idealized" version of events in that it's a
fairly positive account of Microsoft's battle to beat Netscape. But it's a
great story. What most people don't realize is there's a whole group of
Softies inside Microsoft who were and still are fighting for the ideals that
the Internet represents. The early days of IE and IIS represents a time when
that group was allowed to shine and they produced great things.

It's actually very inspiring especially if you're a person whose found himself
arguing for those same values in whatever company you work for.

------
dbrush
Dealers of Lightning: Xerox PARC and the Dawn of the Computer Age

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xsmasher
In general, "Revolution in the Valley" about the making of the Macintosh. You
cen feel the excitement of the team, and it goes into some fun technical
details on how they created a GUI while everyone else outside research labs
was still text-based.

For game programmers, "Masters of Doom" and "Dungeons and Dreamers". Both have
a real human perspective on the people and companies they cover; they made me
feel like regular humans, not gods, made games.

------
sriramk
Showstopper. This influenced me to join Microsoft and work on the same team as
Dave Cutler

------
davidbnewquist
_Masters of Deception: The Gang That Ruled Cyberspace_ by Michele Slatalla

Story is circa 1990.

~~~
brl
If you liked this, you should check out _Underground_ by Suelette Dreyfus.
It's by far the best book about hackers ever written.

Edit: Oops, already mentioned in this thread
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=621273>

------
plinkplonk
"One Jump Ahead: Computer Perfection at Checkers" - How Dr. Schaeffer's team
came up with Chinook, the program that became world champion at checkers.
Later the team went on to solve checkers (like tic tac toe is a "solved"
game).

Some of the book is about researching new algorithms etc, but a large chunk is
about programming, debugging etc. Very enjoyable read.

------
pg
_Skunkworks_

~~~
dbrush
Excellent book. I've long since lost my copy, but I think I'll try to procure
another today.

~~~
herdrick
I've got a copy I can lend you. Somehow I didn't know you were a fan.

------
flpatriot92
<em>Dreaming in Code</em>

Chandler Project.

------
dan_the_welder
The Car That Could: The Inside Story of GM's Revolutionary Electric Vehicle by
Michael Shnayerson.

If that gives you a taste for how crazy General Motors is, follow up with On a
Clear Day You Can See General Motors by John Z. Delorian. Less about tech,
more about management anti patterns!

------
abstractbill
Artificial Life, by Steven Levy - I've lost count of how many times I've read
it.

~~~
jf
Hackers, by Steven Levy is a great book too.

------
davidmathers
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution by Steven Levy

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers_Heroes_of_the_Computer_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hackers_Heroes_of_the_Computer_Revolution)

------
paulgb
I'm still reading "What the Dormouse Said: How 60s Counterculture Shaped the
Personal Computer", but I'm finding it quite good. Though I guess it's more
about tech (counter)culture than tech itself.

~~~
davidmathers
Try finding a copy of Computer Lib/Dream Machines by Ted Nelson (1974), it's
pretty awesome.

<http://www.amazon.com/dp/0914845497/>

To establish his credibility he lists both his "technology credentials" and
his "counter culture credentials". If I had a time machine it would be nice to
send him a copy of "Worse is Better". If he had read it maybe he wouldn't have
failed at inventing the web.

------
neilc
"The New New Thing" by Michael Lewis is great: entertainingly written, and
actually quite instructive about SV culture. "Startup: A Silicon Valley
Adventure" by Jerry Kaplan was also very good.

------
jf
Empires of Light: Edison, Tesla, Westinghouse, and the Race to Electrify the
World, Jill Jonnes

An extremely detailed and engaging book on how electricity was brought to the
United States.

~~~
dbrush
Tesla: Man Out of Time touches a bit on the race between Edison and Tesla. A
very good book as well.

~~~
jf
Does this book cover the business relationship that Tesla had with
Westinghouse?

The impression that I got from Empires of Light is that Tesla's "research"
needed a lot of "design" by Westinghouse's engineers before they could be
turned into practical, working designs.

That makes sense at some level, but I'd love to read other perspectives.

------
grosales
The Dream Machine: J.C.R. Licklider and the Revolution That Made Computing
Personal by M. Mitchell Waldrop. It's a very fun, easy, and interesting read
of the origins of modern computing, the people who worked day and night to
make their vision a reality, and the passion that carried their dreams to
reality (the book, besides mentioning Joseph Carl Robnett Licklider, also
names people from Grace Hopper to Steve Jobs and Bill Gates).

------
indiejade
_The Hot Zone_ by Richard Preston. It's not actually a "tech book" but it is a
true story about the highly technical science of how a deadly virus spread.

------
phugoid
Free as in Freedom, a story about Stallman. I liked the unusual story of rms
driving a car and freaking out as he had to follow someone taking the "scenic
route".

My least favorite was The Google Story - I couldn't stomach more than a
chapter or two of it. It read like the sort of ass-kissing "He's a hero" crap
that I encounter from living in an oil dictatorship.

------
ojbyrne
Not quite a book, but I recently read and enjoyed the first essay from Tom
Wolfe's _Hooking Up_ \- the essay is called "Two Young Men Who Went West" and
is about Robert Noyce and William Shockley and the founding of Fairchild
Semiconductor.

Tossing it out there because most people wouldn't buy that book looking for a
true story tech book, but a little of it is.

------
lackbeard
_Masters of Doom_

~~~
xsmasher
If you liked MoD, then you'll probably enjoy "Dungeons and Dreamers" too; and
the "Postmortems" book from Game Developer.

------
jamesbritt
Soul of a New Machine.

Made me want to go to school for real, and study EE.

I ended up switching to CS (software == opinionated reality; way more fun!)
but that book really inspired me.

Especially the ad for Data General employees, described early in the book:
"Have fun and make money."

Seems like the correct priority there.

------
joe_bleau
Can't pick just one, but I enjoyed: Tuxedo Park, Soul Of a New Machine, and
The Deadly Fuze.

------
ambulatorybird
_The Official Book of Ultima_. About how Richard Garriot started the Ultima
series of computer role-playing games, and founded Origin Systems. Alas, it's
sad when you consider the fate which befell both the game series and the
company.

------
utnick
[http://www.amazon.com/Behind-Deep-Blue-Building-
Computer/dp/...](http://www.amazon.com/Behind-Deep-Blue-Building-
Computer/dp/0691090653)

The story behind the building of the Deep Blue chess playing computer.

Great read. Inspirational.

------
bbg
_Victorian Internet_ , Tom Standage

[http://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Internet-Remarkable-
Nineteen...](http://www.amazon.com/Victorian-Internet-Remarkable-Nineteenth-
line/dp/0425171698)

------
fgimenez
Fortune's Formula by William Poundstone. The story behind Claude Shannon and
Ed Thorpe gambling (and then using those techniques on Wall Street).

------
JimmyL
Steve Squyres' _Roving Mars_ (the book, not the movie)

------
chanux
Art of intrusion - Kevin Mitnick

------
markchristian
Fire in the Valley, hands-down.

------
ngsayjoe
Snowball: The Business of Life

------
earl
I can't recommend "High Stakes, No Prisoners: A Winner's Tale of Greed and
Glory in the Internet Wars" by Charles Ferguson highly enough. He basically
had the idea for the internet then, after Netscape launched just as he was
creating a startup, morphed into making the first set of dev tools for the web
-- Frontpage. Microsoft ended up buying them. He writes an utterly fascinating
look at Microsoft, Gates, Netscape, Clarksdale, and the people who built the
internet. He illustrates the strategies you use to build a platform and begs
Netscape to follow them in the face of Microsoft "getting" the internet. In
any case, it's well worth your time if you like startups; he also writes at
length about the problems with non technical CEOs, etc.

[http://www.amazon.com/High-Stakes-No-Prisoners-
Internet/dp/1...](http://www.amazon.com/High-Stakes-No-Prisoners-
Internet/dp/1587990652/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1242966747&sr=8-1)

