The Soul of a New Machine

Elizabeth Hand's Winterlong, probably 3-4 times. Most of Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammet I've read multiple times. I've read Brautigan's Dreaming of Babylon a bunch of times too. All of William Gibson. Miyazaki's Nausicaä of The Valley of Wind, in various languages. Stephen Cosgrove's Muffin Muncher, I couldn't say how many times I must have read that (It appears they've now changed the title to Muffin Dragon). I've read The Soul of a New Machine a couple of times too. The Hitchhiker's and Dirk Gently's trilogies a few times. Stefano Benni's Baol probably half a dozen times. And Acts of The Apostles by John FX Sundman a bunch too. Oh, and a few of Martin Gardner's books. And Smullyan's To Mock a Mockingbird. And most probably also many others. Most of my books are now in boxes or have been gifted away, though.

I'd say anything that inspires you to move to a career that focuses on engineering, that you cannot get away by being half-ass, is a good book. I recommend two books, none of them is technical. "Showstopper! The Breakneck Race to Create Windows NT and the Next Generation at Microsoft" and "The soul of a new machine". Once you put yourself at the edge of knife, everything you want comes naturally, because you either swim or die.

A short list of books that cost some candles after I reached 40 (has been very picky about books since then). I not only read them into late night but also went back to them whenever I need some mental boost. - The Soul of a New Machine - Showstoppers - iWoz - Athens and Jerusalem (Shestov) I'm devouring many F & SFs (right now reading Arthur Clarke) but so far nothing really sticks. A lot of them are interesting but I'm keeping counting the pages I read. I used to burn candles reading them back in the day, but the magic was lost. I'm going to try out some recommendations I got on HN and see what happens.

The Soul of a New Machine, by Tracy Kidder https://archive.org/details/soulofnewmachine0000kidd/page/n6... (https://archive.org/details/soulofnewmachine0000kidd/page/n6/mode/1up)

Soul of a New Machine Showstopper Books that pull me from the darker mood from time to time.

Don't know who you mean by "everyone," but the only two mentioned so far suitable for a broad audience are The Soul of a New Machine and The Cuckoo's Nest.

Soul of a New Machine (Tracy Kidder, 1981) the experience building the DG 32 bit mini.

If we're recommending Showstopper (which I do), I'd add Soul of a New Machine about Data General, where I worked for many years--but a bit later.

_The Biography of Ottmar Mergenthaler, Inventor of the Linotype_ by Carl Schlesinger https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3648638-the-biography-of... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/3648638-the-biography-of-ottmar-mergenthaler-inventor-of-the-linotype) c.f., _Tolbert Lanston and the Monotype: The Origin of Digital Typesetting_ by Richard L Hopkins https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17140645-tolbert-lanston... (https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/17140645-tolbert-lanston-and-the-monotype) For background on how difficult/apparently impossible this was, see the story of Mark Twain's investment in a typesetting machine: https://twain.lib.virginia.edu/yankee/cymach6.html One of the more memorably moments of my life was visiting a local newspaper back when they were still setting type using a Linotype machine --- it's just incredible to watch one (or the competing Monotype) work. If I could, I'd have a Monotype machine in my shop along with a printing press, but first I'd need a shop, rather than a workbench at one end of the basement laundry room...…

Another vote for The Soul of a New Machine. It's one of my favorite books.

The Soul Of A New Machine, by Tracy Kidder - The history of computing fascinates me, and this is one of my favorite books on the topic. Hackers, by Steven Levy - Again, computing history, and especially relevant to me because I started personal computing in the mid-80s and like reading about the stuff I missed. Levy is always fun to read. There are a lot of good books on the microcomputer revolution, this one is just my favorite. Bird By Bird, by Anne Lamott - It's not just a book about writing, but a book about living. Lamott is a born storyteller, and every one of her non-fiction books is inspiring and highly readable. On Writing, by Stephen King - I am not a King fan. The only fiction piece he's written I come back to is The Stand. But the story of how he became a writer, and his life as a writer, gives me hope for my own writing. And his advice is valuable; even if I don't like his books, I can't argue with his success.

I'm re-reading Tracy Kidder's "The Soul of a New Machine" at the moment. It's about Data General and the development of a new minicomputer. I read it at the dawn of my IT career in the 1990s and found much of was still relevant then. (the book was written in 1981) Thirty years later, I'm mostly just nodding as I follow along; yep, yep, yep. "Engineering" is a distant second to corporate politics and office pecking order. Reading Brian Shul's "Sled Driver" autobiography on the tablet. Shul was an SR-71 pilot, and the book is about 10% Shul and 90% SR-71. It reads fast and it's interesting, with unexpected bits of information. Just finished David Goggins' "Can't Hurt Me." It's supposed to be a "motivational" autobiography. I can't say I felt motivated. Most of his problems were self-inflicted, and he treated his family and children like dirt.

The best two books I read in the last year-ish are "The Golden Notebook" (novel by Doris Lessing) and "The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder. Best tech book has been "Designing Data-Intensive Applications".

Have you looked for online courses? Here are a few of the books I'd go through around computers, but are you thinking more extensive history of "technology?" Like how we've grown from printing press as innovation? Soul of a New Machine is a great non-fiction but reads like a fiction account of trying to overtake the Vax by building one of the first 32-bit machines https://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-Kidder/dp/0316... (https://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-Kidder/dp/0316491977) A Biography of the Pixel https://www.amazon.com/Biography-Pixel-Leonardo-Alvy-Smith/d... (https://www.amazon.com/Biography-Pixel-Leonardo-Alvy-Smith/dp/0262542455) great overview of the innovation and math that pushed graphics forwrard The Information: A History, A Theory, A Flood https://www.amazon.com/Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/1... (https://www.amazon.com/Information-History-Theory-Flood/dp/1400096235) walks through information theory and how we got to the internet Dealers of lightning: https://www.amazon.com/Dealers-of-Lightning-audiobook/dp/B00... (https://www.amazon.com/Dealers-of-Lightning-audiobook/dp/B0000546R7/) how a lot of modenr computing grew out of Xerox

It's quite old and so doesn't include the rise of the Internet and subsequent innovations but, Accidental Empires is pretty good: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accidental_Empires Where Wizards Stay Up Late - on the creation of the Internet The Soul of a New Machine - On computing in the 70's and 80's The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison - On the rise of Oracle (also has the best title) Masters of Doom - A history of id Software What The Dormouse Said - How the 60's counterculture influenced computing The New New Thing - Follows Jim Clark around while he creates SGI, Netscape, etc...

In my opinion, it's as much a "recommended read" as a lot of other so-called "classics": - Rapid Application Development (also by McConnell) - Soul of a New Machine by Kidder - Mythical Man Month by Fred Brooks - Programming Pearls by John Bentley - Applied Cryptography (2e) by Bruce Schneier - The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stohl - Structured Computer Organization by Tanenbaum & Todd - Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software by Gamma, Helm, etc - A New Kind of Science by Wolfram And many more could be added to this list Sure, some of them use acronyms or reference technology that you've either never heard of or has been supplanted But you could [nearly] do a find-and-replace on those "outdated" terms with a "current" term, and the books would [effectively] be up-to-date Don't get hung-up on specific examples - they're just there to illustrate the problem domain

That would be a long list, given that I read a lot of books and would generally say that most of the books I've read were worth investing time in to some extent. But for what it's worth, here's a subset, cribbed from my previous HN comments: Something Deeply Hidden - Sean Carroll The Universe Speaks in Numbers: How Modern Math Reveals Nature's Deepest Secrets - Graham Farmelo The Man Who Loved Only Numbers: The Story of Paul Erdos and the Search for Mathematical Truth - Paul Hoffman The Man Who Knew Infinity: A Life of the Genius Ramanujan - Robert Kanigel Lost in Math - Sabine Hossenfelder The First Three Minutes - Steven Weinberg Hyperspace - Michio Kaku Not Even Wrong - Peter Woit The Trouble With Physics - Lee Smolin About Time - Paul Davies Time Reborn - Lee Smolin The Elegant Universe - Brian Greene The Hidden Reality - Brian Greene The Fabric of the Cosmos - Brian Greene Quantum Space: Loop Quantum Gravity and the Search for the Structure of Space, Time, and the Universe - Jim Baggott The Universe Speaks in Numbers: How Modern Math Reveals Nature's Deepest Secrets - Graham Farmelo Three Roads To Quantum Gravity - Lee Smolin…

Great question, I will come back to see what ideas people have. Thanks for the Turing book suggestion too. I have read lots of non-fiction books about programmers and engineers that have been very inspiring, they're just not technical: "Masters of Doom", "Blood, Sweat, and Pixels", "Coders at Work", "The Idea Factory", "The Soul of a New Machine", "Dealers of Lightning"...

Tracy Kidder's Soul of a New Machine for computer engineering.

Not exactly what you’re looking for, but Elements of Typographic Style is an excellent introduction to typography written with so much passion it makes you want to become a typographer. We’re mostly programmers here, but The Soul of a New Machine describes the creation of a computer, which is not something people do a lot these days. Fascinating stuff

The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder. Probably the best book on product development ever written. Command Line Heroes podcast on it: https://www.redhat.com/en/command-line-heroes/season-4/minic... (https://www.redhat.com/en/command-line-heroes/season-4/minicomputers) (Disclosure: I work for Red Hat) Also worth checking out in this vein is Showstopper about the development of Windows NT which focuses on the role of Dave Cutler.

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.

+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.

I agree that it’s tough to truly grok technical material in purely audio format. With that said, I think you can learn a ton by learning about the history, trends, and other software companies. Here are some of my favorites: The Dream Machine Hackers: Heroes of the Computer a Revolution How the Internet Happened The Soul of a New Machine AI Superpowers Platform Revolution The Everything Store

The Soul of a New Machine was a fascinating listen.

Seconded! This is a great read. No mode bit!

Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder. Pulitzer Prize winner for non-fiction in 1982.

Right now: "Never Enough: The Neuroscience and Experience of Addiction" (Judith Grisel) Recommend. Addict turned neuroscientist who doesn't hold back, so a good mix of gritty details— > After I got sober, it took me a little over a year to go a single day without wishing for a drink, but it was more than nine years before my craving to get high abated. —and science. Before that: "Educated: A Memoir" (Tara Westover) Recommend. A good break from typical non-fiction books: easy to read, sometimes thrilling, and emotional. Before that: "The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America" (Margaret Pugh O'Mara) Don't recommend. I really wanted to like this book, and I believe some of the themes are important and aren't often discussed. E.g., the support the Valley received from politicians, the lobby groups, the size of military spending back in the day… It's possible my expectations were in the wrong place—I wanted to be inspired like with "The Idea Factory" (Jon Gertner), "The Soul of a New Machine" (Tracy Kidder), "Dealers of Lightning" (Michael A Hiltzik), etc.

I read Cuckoo’s Egg and also liked “The Soul of a New Machine”, “SkunkWorks”, and “The Making of the Atomic Bomb”.

If you like thrillers with a geeky edge to them, you might like Zero Sum Game by S.L Huang. Some review I read described the protagonist of the story as "the geek's Jack Reacher". Pretty good analogy, IMO. If you want non-fiction, maybe try Dreaming In Code. Or if you haven't read it before, how about *The Soul of a New Machine"?

I enjoyed all these. All of them are worth a read. Business / Tech Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance. Are Your Lights On?: How to Figure Out What the Problem Really Is. Managing Expectations: Working with People Who Want More: Working with People Who Want More, Better, Faster, Sooner, Now! Explore It!: Reduce Risk and Increase Confidence with Exploratory Testing. Spam Nation: The Inside Story of Organized Cybercrime-From Global Epidemic to Your Front Door. Weapons of Math Destruction: How Big Data Increases Inequality and Threatens Democracy. Badass: Making Users Awesome. Social Engineering in IT Security: Tools, Tactics, and Techniques. How to Make Sense of Any Mess: Information Architecture for Everybody. Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great. The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable. The Global War for Internet Governance. Coding Freedom: The Ethics and Aesthetics of Hacking. Hate Crimes in Cyberspace. High Noon: The Inside Story of Scott McNealy and the Rise of Sun Microsystems. Mindset: The New Psychology of Success. Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins of the Internet. The Soul of A New Machine.…

Maybe not perfect matches, but a few titles I'm familiar with that you might like: Dreaming in Code - covers Mitch Kapor's post Lotus effort to build Chandler. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dreaming_in_Code Everyone Else Must Fail - all about Larry Ellison and Oracle https://www.amazon.com/Everyone-Else-Must-Fail-Unvarnished/d... (https://www.amazon.com/Everyone-Else-Must-Fail-Unvarnished/dp/0712621482) Winners, Losers & Microsoft - title says it all https://www.amazon.com/Winners-Losers-Microsoft-Competition-... (https://www.amazon.com/Winners-Losers-Microsoft-Competition-Technology/dp/0945999844) Two books by Bill Gates: Business At The Speed of Thought https://www.amazon.com/Business-Speed-Thought-Succeeding-Dig... (https://www.amazon.com/Business-Speed-Thought-Succeeding-Digital/dp/0446525685/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1527861952&sr=1-1&keywords=business+at+the+speed+of+thought) and The Road Ahead https://www.amazon.com/Road-Ahead-Completely-Up-Date/dp/0140... (https://www.amazon.com/Road-Ahead-Completely-Up-Date/dp/0140260404/ref=pd_sbs_14_2?_encoding=UTF8&pd_rd_i=0140260404&pd_rd_r=ZRRXQ50NEK3EPWVC9FM9&pd_rd_w=q6Fr8&pd_rd_wg=iFPgv&psc=1&refRID=ZRRXQ50NEK3EPWVC9FM9) Also:…

Definitely one of the best tech case study books I've ever read. Book flows so well.

_Showstopper_ One of the best tech books, after _Soul of a New Machine_ (recommended in the comments, too). Covers Microsoft's creation of Windows NT. _DEC is Dead. Long Live DEC_ about the rise and fall of Digital Equipment Corporation. _Skunkworks_ Lockheed-Martin's creation of the SR-71. _Moneyball_ using math to build a top flight US baseball team. Broadening the category a bit: _The Smartest Guys in the Room_ is about Enron's collapse. Not directly related to computer tech but definitely tech and people. _Billion Dollar Lessons_ covers several spectacular company failures. Again, not strictly tech related but amazing stories of crash & burn. Includes (IIRC) Iridium, Kodak, IBM.

"Soul of a new machine" by Tracy Kidder.

The Soul of a New Machine is a wonderful book. I don't think it helped me career-wise, but it's an absolute joy to read.

Some I haven't seen mentioned here: 1. Coders at Work Peter Seibel does an amazing job of asking programmers questions that make them explain their methodology. The interview with Donald Knuth is awesome; really enjoyed hearing him talk about literate programming. 2. The Soul of a New Machine Tracy Kidder's 1981 Pulitzer Prize winner I think is a brilliant case study on how engineers work together and the things that can go wrong and right with different personalities interacting with highly technical ideas. The project in this book starts without the consent of management, which to me shows the value of questioning the system to add business / engineering value. 3. Little Schemer Small book that will give your brain a serious workout and show you how to problem solve with Lisp like languages. Even if you never end up using a Lisp dialect, this book expands your brain. I have more here, all of which I recommend for software and other careers http://benbrostoff.github.io/books/

It's also extremely well written, and a great introduction to how computers work in the inside that can be understood by non technical readers. It's also the only book which succeeded in expressing both the rollercoaster I feel when programming.

"The Soul of a New Machine", by Tracy Kidder. Solving hard problems, dealing with (and balancing) both technical and business concerns, but with emphasis on getting things done over process and organisational concerns.

+1

"Soul of a New Machine" - Tracy Kidder. I read it while in engineering school, and it's the first time it kind of clicked with me of what an engineer actually "does"

Non fiction and IT related: Algorithmics The spirit of computing: this is a really great exploration of 'algorithmic' thinking, accessible to anyone: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2378136.Algorithmics Soul of a new machine: the book won the pulitzer, it's about now defunct Data General and implementing a new machine in the early 80's: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7090.The_Soul_of_a_New_Ma... (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/7090.The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine) Fiction: Marooned in Realtime: Vernor Vinge on a group of people who missed the singularity, and try to understand what happened. A damn good detective story too: http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/167847.Marooned_in_Realti... (http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/167847.Marooned_in_Realtime)

That is one awesome book.

I have barely finished chapter one of this 1981 book but I think it offers insight into the past for all of us who got into this field after Java was already prevalent. > It chronicles the experiences of a computer engineering team racing to design a next-generation computer at a blistering pace under tremendous pressure. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005HG4W9W/

The Soul of a New Machine. Fascinating documentation of Data General's development of the 32-bit Eclipse machine. Sorta programming, sorta hardware... back when the two were more tightly integrated.

The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged by Ayn Rand. Those are the two to start with. If you like those, check out some of her nonfiction books: The Virtue of Selfishness: A New Concept of Egoism, Philosophy: Who Needs It, and Introduction to Objectivist Epistemology (these are but a few - Rand wrote a long series of nonfiction books). Ayn Rand's Normative Ethics: The Virtuous Egoist by Tara Smith (a philosophy professor at UT-Austin) is excellent because it unpacks Ayn Rand's ethical system in an academic style. Finally, Leonard Peikoff's Objectivism: The Philosophy of Ayn Rand gives a comprehensive view of Rand's entire philosophy. Light reading (not by Objectivist authors, and not in any particular order): Masters of Doom: How Two Guys Created an Empire and Transformed Pop Culture by David Kushner The Soul of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder The Double Helix: A Personal Account of the Discovery of the Structure of DNA by James Watson What Do You Care What Other People Think?: Further Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character by Richard Feynman

Mathematics is probably "theoretical" enough? A good Discrete Mathematics text, Perhaps some others. He'll have some mathematics knowledge around which to orient his programming. And people have been learning math for a long time -- meaning, long before computers. Related, a good book on logic, including logic as implemented in circuits. I recall a fairly intense "computer science survey course" back in college, that started with and, or, not gates and built up through adders, etc, to an ACU. Introduced a pseudo assembly language. I forget how far it continued beyond that. Something like that book I can see doable in good part on paper and in thinking, and it would provide some fundamental background that many programmers don't have or don't retain. It might also be helpful to give him a good, concise book on project management. So that he has some idea what people are talking about when he encounters the work environment.…

I've always really enjoyed "The Soul of a New Machine" Amazon, non-affiliate: http://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-Kidder/dp/03164... (http://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-Kidder/dp/0316491977/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1288795939&sr=1-1) It's the story of a team of engineers building a new minicomputer, back in the late 70s. I couldn't put it down. He manages to make the politics interesting and the technical details simple.

Here's a few I've really liked that have a broader subject matter than only what you asked for. I figure that if you like to read you'd like these books. --- NON-FICTION --- Darkness Visible A Mathemematician's Apology Omnivore's Dilemma Fermat's Enigma The Code Book Born to Run Judgement of Paris Siddhartha Killing Pablo The Victorian Internet Lone Survivor I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman Papillon Into Thin Air Born on a Blue Day Touching the Void Got Fight The Conquest of Happiness --- FICTION --- Switch Bitch Lost Horizon The Cuckoo's Egg The Simlarillion The Time Traveler's Wife The Alchemist The Count of Monte Cristo A Canticle for Leibowitz Neverwhere My Uncle Oswald Stories of Your Life and Others Invisible Cities Life of Pi Atlas Shrugged --- WALL STREET / FINANCE --- When Genius Failed Liar's Poker Buffett (Lowenstein) Bull! Black-Scholes and Beyond (textbook) Fixed Income Securities (textbook) The Road to Serfdom The Smartest Guys in the Room Fortune's Formula The Fourth Turning Inside the House of Money --- ENTREPRENEURSHIP / COMPUTERS (non-textbook) --- Masters of Doom It's Not About the Bike Dot. Bomb Founders at Work The PayPal Wars…

- How To Win Friends & Influence People by Dale Carnegie http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/06... (http://www.amazon.com/How-Win-Friends-Influence-People/dp/0671723650) - Beethoven As I Knew Him by Anton Felix Schindler http://www.amazon.com/Beethoven-As-I-Knew-Him/dp/0486292320 - Soul Of A New Machine (It's about hardware!) and Mountains Beyond Mountains, both by Tracy Kidder - Eating Animals by Jonathan Safron Foer

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.

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

"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)

Seconded. Besides telling a familiar story in a very compelling way, Kidder has a genius for quotability: One engineer, Josh Rosen, who burned out fighting nanosecond-level timing bugs was seduced by the attraction of commune living and left to live in the country. His resignation note declared, I’m going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season. Gems like this one appear about once every two pages, give or take.

Non-fiction, but the best tech startup story I know of: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine

I would have to agree; I was surprised how entertaining this book was when read it a few weeks ago after it was mentioned on DadHacker.

"The Soul of a New Machine" by Tracy Kidder.

Off the top of my head: - Soul of a New Machine - The Cuckoo's Egg - Revolution in the Valley - Fire in the Valley - Compilers by Sethi, Ullman, Aho - Masters of Doom - iWoz - Steve Jobs & the NeXT Big Thing - Crypto - Code - The Man Who Loved Only Numbers - The Man Who Knew Infinity - ANSI Common LISP Most of the books above are recommended because once reading them you will have an uncontrollable urge to immediately create something brilliant. You will not be able to stop yourself. -m

Hmmm, here's a list of books I really like: Memory as a Programming Concept in C and C++ by Frenck The Design and Implementation of the FreeBSD Operating System by McKusick/Neville-Neil Learning GNU Emacs by Cameron, et al. Practical Common Lisp by Seibel The C Programming Language by K&R The C++ Programming Language Stroustrup The Design and Analysis of Algorithms by Leviten Assembly Language Programming for the IBM PC Family by Jones Essays/Collections: Hackers & Painters by PG Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman by Feynman What Do You Care What Other People Think by Feynman The Cathedral & The Bazaar by Raymond Novels: The Soul of a New Machine by Kidder Where Wizards Stay up Late by Hafner