#11: Tracy Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine

[kareila]

I suspect that this 1981 book was recommended to me by whatever algorithm noticed that I had recently read Where Wizards Stay Up Late and Hackers. However, I found it relatively difficult to engage with the subject matter in this case, since I hadn't already heard of any of the engineers, their company, or the computer they were building together. As far as I can tell, they all vanished into obscurity together with the rise of the IBM PC, and only achieved some modicum of memorability because of this book. Maybe the manic, free-for-all style of designing and debugging described here was radical for its time, but it hardly seems noteworthy four decades later.