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Just for Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary

Linus Torvalds, David Diamond

2 readers recommend it across 2 discussions

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mitchelldeacon9
The following is a list of my favorite books on software engineering, cyber-security, and the history of IT business development. Bowden, Mark (2011) Worm: The First Digital World War Brooks, Frederick (1995) Mythical Man-Month, 2nd ed. Christensen, Clayton (1997) Innovator's Dilemma: When New Technologies Cause Great Firms to Fail Hafner, Katie and Matthew Lyon (1996) Where Wizards Stay Up Late: Origins of the Internet Hunt, Andrew and David Thomas (1999) Pragmatic Programmer MacCormick, John (2012) Nine Algorithms that Changed the Future McConnell, Steve (2004) Code Complete, 2nd ed. Mitnick, Kevin and William Simon (2002) Art of Deception Poulsen, Kevin (2011) Kingpin: How One Hacker Took Over the Billion-Dollar Cyber-Crime Underworld Raymond, Eric (2003) Art of Unix Programming Stone, Brad (2013) The Everything Store: Jeff Bezos and the Age of Amazon Torvalds, Linus and David Diamond (2001) Just for Fun: Story of an Accidental Revolutionary Wallace, James and Jim Erickson (1992) Hard Drive: Bill Gates and Making of the Microsoft Empire Williams, Sam (2002) Free as in Freedom: Richard Stallman's Crusade for Free Software…
msg
Linus's biography, Just For Fun, is not bad. I have sentimental attachments to Man Out of Time, the Tesla biography. No Man Knows My History is about Joseph Smith, founder of the Mormon church. It is naturally controversial to the LDS, for its depiction of Smith as a polygamist con man who fell sideways into a religious racket and never quite fell out. I found it very readable, full of color. It might depend on your interest in the period and the subject matter. Stephen King's On Writing is about half biography, half writing manual. I thought it was terrific. It's had several rereads already.