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Ask HN: Computer Science/History Books?

331 points by jackofalltrades ↗ HN
Hi guys, can you recommend interesting books on Computer Science or computer history (similar to Dealers of Lightning) to read on this quarantine times? I really like that subject and am looking for something to keep myself away from TV at night.

Thank you.

155 comments

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Ahmedb
I was about to recommend Dealers of Lightning :D
nieksand
Kernighan's "UNIX: A History and a Memoir" is a fun read.
CWuestefeld
I'm in the middle of this right now. It really is an interesting read. He's clear enough, and keeps out of too much detail, so a civilian can read it, but there's enough meat to be interesting to a techie.
Macintosh007
Check out “Fire in the Valley.” It’s a classic!
srb24
agreed, also see if you can find the made-for-tv movie adaptation of it "The Pirates Of Silicon Valley"
voidray
The Dream Machine is very long but IMO very good and worth the effort. Part-biography, part-history (going all the way back to the early days e.g. Turing), and extremely thorough!
djhworld
Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution ~ Steven Levy

The Soul of a New Machine - Tracy Kidder

joaomacp
+1 on "The Soul of a New Machine": it's one of the most mentioned computer history books, and inspired the great "Halt and Catch Fire" TV series.
gallego2007
The Soul of a New Machine is a great read! Highly recommended.
dbcurtis
That came out when I was a CPU logic designer, deep in the middle of a major mainframe project. (100K ECL, 20 BTU ton water chiller per CPU). My cube-mate and I both gave that book to our wive's and said: "Here. This is what I do."
mhh__
I haven't touched it in ages but "where wizards stay up late" is about the origins of the internet
monk_the_dog
Two 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 for so long.

arman_ashrafian
The Dream Machine might be my favorite book of all time.
JeremyReimer
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.
khaledh
I came here to recommend The Dream Machine. Wonderful book and extremely well written.
TruffleLabs
The Computer History Museum has lots of history on line https://computerhistory.org/
rjsw
The articles that I have read could use some editing, I'm guessing they were transcribed from audio recordings by people who were not computer experts.
kratom_sandwich
Haven'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)

CiscoCodex
I'm still working thru "The Innovators"! and so far it has been a delight. One of the main points of the book was the importance of teamwork. It's a great take on the idea that in the shadow of great figures, like Steve Jobs and IBM, lie hundreds of lesser known innovators.
wmf
I thought Turing's Cathedral was pretty good but note that it's mostly about John von Neumann not Alan Turing.
djmips
Turing’s Cathedral but von Neumann was the Pope.
Oarch
+1 for Turing's Cathedral. As mentioned, it's a lot about von Neumann. Slightly dense writing style but does a great job of explaining some of the key intellectual breakthroughs behind development of the computer. It's most about the 1940s-50s but it sets the historical context well (both contemporary and going back to Gottfried Leibnitz).
fancyfredbot
Turing's Cathedral is fantastic. The most enjoyable computer science history book I've read. Highly recommended.
SaxonRobber
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

One of my favorite books, it covers everything from braille to microprocessors. A great book for anyone interested in technology.

drej
Code is excellent, Innovators are immersive, the Code Book is brilliant, albeit less about computer history and more about cryptography in general (all books by simon Singh are super interesting).
Impossible
Racing 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.

bryananderson
I'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.
pjmorris
"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?"

Agathos
Gamers at Work is also great if you're curious about the early days of the games industry. The discussions focus on the business side, so it reads more like Founders than like Coders. Interesting to see where some of today's giants began.
Aaronstotle
The 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.
ellius
Seconded, this is a really excellent book.
westurner
"The Information: A History, a Theory, a Flood" starts with "1 | Drums That Talk" re: African drum messaging; a complex coding scheme:

> Here was a messaging system that outpaced the best couriers, the fastest horses on good roads with way stations and relays.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Information:_A_History,_a_...

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/8701960-the-information

From "Polynesian People Used Binary Numbers 600 Years Ago" https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/polynesian-people... :

> Binary arithmetic, the basis of all virtually digital computation today, is usually said to have been invented at the start of the eighteenth century by the German mathematician Gottfried Leibniz. But a study now shows that a kind of binary system was already in use 300 years earlier among the people of the tiny Pacific island of Mangareva in French Polynesia.

sien
The 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

homarp
on the PLATO book, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15784052 has interesting comments from the author. On PLATO itself, https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16615420

While i'm at it, the book 'Minitel, Welcome to the Internet' - https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/minitel is about the history of the french Minitel (previous HN discussion on the Minitel - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14681561 )

gxqoz
That Minitel book is okay, but I didn't get too much out of it that wasn't on an early Reply All podcast episode.
homarp
this one https://gimletmedia.com/shows/reply-all/8whoda ? "In the early 80's, way before the world wide web existed, the French government shipped a $200 terminal to every home with a phone line, and created a service that for decades ran alongside the internet. It was called The Minitel. Producer Carla Green speaks to reporter Jean-Marc Manach, who, in the early 90's, made a living posing as a woman in sex chat rooms on Minitel. "
Rerarom
Also read the counterpart to friendly orange glow, "A People’s History of Computing in the United States"
Minor49er
"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.

homarp
for the 'road ahead', I guess it's interesting to read both versions (the original edition and the 'Completely revised and up-to-date' that actually takes into account the Internet)
Rerarom
I only read the first one (I knew about the existence of the second). It's very funny how he waxes poetic in several chapters about the future "Information Highway" (not superhighway as some have said) and takes a lot of care to make sure we understand that the Internet is not it, but just a precursor.
justicezyx
The Intel Trinity About the early days until 90s for Intel, having stories on Shockley's semiconductor lab, Fairchild then Intel etc.

The soul of a new machine Not much history, but more on how a small computer manufacturer in 70s. It's quite relevant today, as the process very much resembles a software startup's.

oneplane
Revolution in the Valley by Andy Hertzfeld is pretty good. Not purely about the technical details but definitely the mindset, culture and activities that made a huge impact on modern consumer computing.
elipsey
Bentley, Jon., Bell Labs. "Programming Pearls" 1986. --Coding excercises, advice, and annecdotes about problem solving. Get up on grandpa's knee and listen to a bunch of stories about UNIX.

Stephenson, Neal. "In the Beginning...Was the Command Line" 1999. --History of the evolution of UI's and their impact on people, culture, productivity, especially 80's and 90's.

Van Wyk, Christopher J., Bell Labs. "Data Structures and C Programs" 1988. --D & A textbook, 80's style. Like Bently, more focus than we are now used to on things like space time trade offs, resource constraints, in-place operations, etc.

Mongoose
Highly recommend A History of Modern Computing [1]. Starting with the ENIAC in the '40s through the successive generations of computing technology in the 20th century, it gives a fantastic overview of the field's history.

Sadly, now that I look into it, it looks like it's out of print. There are a few copies available on Amazon, so act now!

[1] https://mitpress.mit.edu/books/history-modern-computing

jonjacky
I think that the best sections in this book are on the 1950s through the 1970s: the mainframe and minicomputer eras, and the beginnings of the Internet and personal computers. That's all in the first edition.