Reddit reviews The Soul of A New Machine
We found 21 Reddit comments about The Soul of A New Machine. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Back Bay Books
Reddit reviews The Soul of A New MachineWe found 21 Reddit comments about The Soul of A New Machine. Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.
Here's my list of the classics:
General Computing
Computer Science
Software Development
Case Studies
Employment
Language-Specific
C
Python
C#
C++
Java
Linux Shell Scripts
Web Development
Ruby and Rails
Assembly
Non-fiction, which to my mind makes it better:
The Soul of a New Machine
Also non-fiction and a great read, the autobiography of aircraft designer/novelist Nevil Shute: Slide Rule
If you're interested in something that's more story than technical reference, you might enjoy The Soul Of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder:
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-Kidder/dp/0316491977/
It's got techy stuff in there too, but takes you through the history of a particular machine's creation.
Amazon links for books mentioned in this thread:
\/u/thetrueonion (OP)
\/u/llothar:
\/u/DallasGreen:
\/u/gearnut:
\/u/frothysasquatch:
\/u/Beefstyles:
\/u/CalledCaptainHook:
\/u/75footubi:
\/u/Bradm77:
I was thinking more along the lines of Soul of A New Machine
These are not exactly books about computer science, but rather about the various human aspects (both are non-fiction):
The Cuckoo's Egg by Cliff Stoll. This is about one of the first computer hackers (in the black hat media sense of hacker). The author stumbled onto the intrusion due to a 75 cent billing discrepancy, and went on to invent honeypots and other creative means of tracking the hacker.
The Soul of A New Machine by Tracy Kidder. Written in 1981, it follows two competing teams in a Massachusetts computer company trying to build a 32-bit minicomputer under intense time pressure.
If you're looking for a story, here's a good classic non-fiction one:
The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
And a fictional one:
The Bug by Ellen Ullman
I read this in 8th grade: http://www.amazon.com/The-Soul-A-New-Machine/dp/0316491977/
Soul of a New Machine - almost the same story
i sing the body electric - from a pure software pov
The Soul of a New Machine amazon link
>I am curious, what were your responsibilities/career like in the banking industry? How influential were you, if at all?
Not really very high level as most people would see it, and I mainly worked at a small rural branch operation, but that needs to be qualified.
First of all people incorrectly think that working at a "big bank" in a city is the way to get experience and in depth knowledge.
In fact the opposite is true; the bigger the "branch" the more the work is broken down into specialized things, and the longer it takes to learn and gain experience in anything but the single task you are hired for -- whereas conversely, in a small bank or outlying branch operation, if you are at all savvy you are forced to be a factotum, and probably end up wearing just about every "hat" there is and doing just about every job on an as needed basis: because small banks (and branches) have to (or at least in my day DID) perform ALL of the same functions done at larger banks. Yeah the deals and the dollars were probably smaller, but just as building a small house is functionally no different than building a large one, the same set of tasks applies.
As an analogy: think of a two car factories, one a major "big name" operation, and the other a "custom build" one -- if you work in a major manufacturer's factory, say that has 5,000 people building two lines of vehicles, you may spend your entire career doing nothing but tightening the bolts on the gas tanks -- conversely if you work at a small custom car manufacturer, you may, especially over time, very well end up building an entire car yourself, and indeed several types of vehicles from start to finish.
Well that was what happened with me.
In addition to us being a very small branch, other than the VP/branch manager (who also served as the loan manager, etc) we typically had 5 people working there, 3 of them part time "tellers" that variously worked lunches and Friday evenings/Saturday mornings (when everyone cashed/deposited paychecks, made loan payments, etc); and then 2 full-time people, myself and a woman (initially an older lady a "teller supervisor" with years of experience, but when she took a job at a different bank, I was promoted to her place and we hired another young "pleasant face" woman as a teller to assist me).
And -- this is key (especially 30 years ago) -- other than the VP, I was the only male, so from early on (even when the older "teller supervisor" was still there) I was essentially forced to do a lot of things that the women simply didn't want or even flatly refused to do (the women HATED {and quite literally FEARED} the idea of doing the "carry" of checks & cash to/from our larger nearby branch -- the source of our vault currency -- the idea of carrying $50k or so around in their car was frightening to them) and until I was hired the VP/branch manager had to do all of several various tasks himself, despite the fact that he was also manager of a 2nd and far larger branch some 45 miles away.
I was chiefly taught how banks actually operate and make loans (and profits on them, etc) by that VP/branch manager -- he was in his late 50's and he had been in banking in various roles up the ladder since his early 20's (he had even been president of his own bank previously, which had been "merged" into the larger bank about 2 years prior to my being hired) -- anyway he saw me as following in his footsteps, and not only tutored me privately, but sent me for just about every "class" that was available with the local/state bankers association, and had me do a whole host of "on the job" training/understudy in various positions at our other larger banks; he even took me along to a couple of regional banking conferences in Chicago (where I "hobnobbed" as a wide-eyed young'un with a LOT of people, some of whom are "big names" now, but weren't back then).
OT: And not to digress too much, but this was the early 1980's, things like ATM's and fully computerized banking were just coming into being -- so a lot of the sessions at the banking conference were on how banking not only had changed during the previous decade plus (the era of "runaway" inflation after the Nixon Shock) but also presentations on how banking & finance was going to be changing, and changing rather dramatically. At the time most credit cards were still the old "kerchunk" carbon copy things -- for those who recall them, and while debit cards linked directly to DDA accounts existed, they were not (yet) in widespread use... sessions on how it was all going to be linked together with the ATM systems and eventually card-readers at every retail outlet were going to become common, and how both "cash" and checks were going to become a rarity and then (ideally) obsoleted entirely, were pretty far-fetched and eye-opening ... at the least to this farm-boy. (Though I had also just read and had brought along "The Soul of a New Machine" -- a bestseller at the time -- and had been into programming in high school - first with remote terminals and then with the first PC's, so I while I was a "newbie kid" a lot of the old-farts around me had endless questions as I was seen as a source of potentially explaining all this "digital-computer-crap" to these guys, men in their 40's and 50's and for whom "modem" was just some meaningless term. You have to realize that the "terminals" we had at our branch operation were old Burroughs teletype style machines, which needed to be occasionally reprogrammed or updated with a paper-tape; and even our banks main branches had just gotten DOS style green-screen CRT-based terminals installed and operational.)
(Continued in reply below...)
Like you I work at a tech startup. When we were just starting, our business/strategy people asked the question you just asked. They opened a dialog with development team, and found good answers. I attribute our success in large part to that dialog being eager and open-minded, just as you are being right now. So, it's good tidings that you are asking.
For us, the answer came from conversation, but it also came from reading the following books together:
HCF is great. If you want to read the book that inspired large chunks of it, Soul of a New Machine is really good.
Before you commit to it, read Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold. If it fires your imagination then computer programming may be is for you.
Another one to read is Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder which is much older, but easily readable by non coders. Again if it fires your imagination then coding might be for you.
CS can lead to many many careers - many more than when I did my degree (80s), but you need to understand where the world of computers is moving to and where you want to be in that space.
If you're just looking for more money, then perhaps you shouldn't be looking at coding as a panacea. Don't get me wrong, coding is fantastic thing to do - if it floats your boat. However it's main problem is that you constantly have to keep yourself up to date with new technologies and techniques. This requires you to have the passion and self motivation to do that training.
I'm been coding since I was 11 (1978) and have seen many many aspects of the industry and the trade. I will concur with some of the comments here that indicate that the degree itself isn't the answer, but could be part of it.
Either whatever you decide - good luck!
Severo Ornstein's book Computing in the Middle Ages: A View From the Trenches 1955-1983
Contains some neat gems and is a neat read
http://www.amazon.com/Computing-Middle-Ages-Trenches-1955-1983/dp/1403315175
The Soul of a New Machine by Tract Kidder is also a lot of fun
http://www.amazon.com/The-Soul-A-New-Machine/dp/0316491977
[The Soul of a New Machine] (http://www.amazon.com/The-Soul-A-New-Machine/dp/0316491977/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1342493295&sr=8-1&keywords=the+soul+of+a+new+machine) by Tracy Kidder is a great read also, it was recommended by one of my professors.
I have one book recommendation that I hope you would enjoy based on your interests. It is called The Soul of A New Machine, and it outlines the development of a computer back in the 80's. It is a little slow to start, but I thought it was a wonderful book that shows how engineers really work.
Can I ask what your level your astronomy knowledge is at? Taken any classes or read any book? Are you fairly new to the subject? That would really affect any recommendations.
I read 'The Soul of a New Machine' https://www.amazon.com/Soul-New-Machine-Tracy-Kidder/dp/0316491977 and decided I wanted to design computers. I ended up being good at mechanical things as well, but I liked all of the EE topics more.
Aside: you might also find some of the equivalent books about the early tech movements interesting; I got into them when I had trouble finding good retro-gaming books several years. Two neat examples would be Exploding The Phone and The Soul Of A New Machine. I never would've guessed that early phreaking or the development of a mainframe could be fascinating, touching and suspenseful, but those books managed to make it seem that way.
Check out The Soul of a New Machine if you're at all interested in computers. It was pretty amazing.
Two books that permanently changed how I code are:
The exercises in: A Discipline for Software EngineeringAnd some of the advice in Software Inspection
A lot of it is about Data, QA and ROI.
​
Some of the Steve McConnell books did have a long term impact, but very minor compared to the above 2 books.
Edit: Hardware books - The Soul of A New Machine is both fun and educational, it is fly on the wall style, I could not put it down.