Tracy Kidder, Author of 'The Soul of a New Machine', Dies At 80 (nytimes.com) 39
Ancient Slashdot reader wiredog writes: Tracy Kidder, author of "The Soul of a New Machine," has died at the age of 80. "The Soul of a New Machine" is about the people who designed and built the Data General Nova, one of the 32 bit superminis that were released in the 1980's just before the PC destroyed that industry. It was excerpted in The Atlantic.
"I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."
"I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season."
Great book, partially why I am a programmer (Score:5, Informative)
RIP, Mr Kidder.
The screwdriver is used up! (Score:2)
But at least it wasn't used for welding.
I concur and still remember many details from The Soul of a New Machine many decades after reading it. Makes me feel used up to hear that he's gone. And my age now feels too close to his...
Most recent of his books that I read was called Mountains Beyond Mountains about Dr Paul Farmer, another great man who died relatively young... Turns out I haven't been able to find any of his other books locally, which surprised me.
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Turns out I haven't been able to find any of his other books locally, which surprised me.
"House"
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I use a meta-search that covers about 25 local library systems, and couldn't find any. (However I didn't fully expand some of the libraries that I don't have cards for. Depends on the local rules.)
Re: The screwdriver is used up! (Score:2)
You won't read on an Ereader or phone ?
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So I ran the narrow search and got zilch, even in Japanese. Then on my mistake with Levy's book I ran that search, too. Still nothing. The broad search on "house" overflowed, but not just with some silly book about a prairie...
So now I'm off to search for Steven Levy books.
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I'm not questioning you. I'd read it just on the author if it was available around here. Rather you should file it as among my personal problems. First, I'm trying to get rid of all of my books, not buy new ones. Second, I choose to live in Japan where the libraries basically treat English books as an afterthought. (By using lots of libraries I'm able to find enough good stuff to read, and I'm reading more and more Japanese books these years.) Third, my second and final Amazon purchase was decades ago...
Re: The screwdriver is used up! (Score:2)
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Whoops. I should check but I trust you and know I've read that book, too. My bad.
Not an excuse, but the explanation is that both books were years ago and both authors write well. (But not difficult to write much better than I do.)
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I lived that book! Not on that project, I worked in Comm and Networking. One of my designs was a terminal server board for the MV8000. I knew a lot of the guys in the book, and worked with some of them on later projects.
My copy of SoaNM has Tom West's signature stamp on the flyleaf -- he made it know that he wasn't going to sign copies, so a couple of us came in hearly, found his signature stamp on his secretary's desk, and saved him the effort. He later managed the joint development of the DG/One with Nipp
Re: Great book, partially why I am a programmer (Score:3)
I, too loved that book. I had been already been working for 6 years for Burroughs on mainframes and peripherals as a so-called Field Engineer and had been thoroughly de-romanticized. I think that book re-energized me.
I wondered why anyone would make a computer that would easily fit through a door. Wouldn't someone just steal it?
I thought it was the DG Eclipse (Score:5, Informative)
I thought it was the development of the DG Eclipse that the book was about.
In any case it was a great story, with the machines named Coke and Gollum. Originally the idea was Coke and Pepsi, but one of the machines was temperemental so it got renamed.
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Aaak. I think it was. That'll teach me to work off of decade old memories...
Well, it probably won't teach me.
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+1 (Score:5, Informative)
Soul of a New Machine was about the development of the MV line, which was the 32-bit extension of the Eclipse line, which was an extension (virtual memory, multitasking, etc.) of the Nova line. Similar to how VAXes were based on the PDP-11 architecture.
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Re: I thought it was the DG Eclipse (Score:1)
We're dating ourselves. (Score:2)
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I remember that line best, as well!
But I also remember the opening scene, where the project manager(?) is out on a boat in a raging storm. Everybody else is freaking out, but he is calm because (it is implied) this is so much less stressful than his job.
Even today i suggest engineers read that book (Score:2)
It realy shows how to test a project and how complex problems can be solved!
32 bits? nobody would ever need more then that
Winner of the Pulitzer (Score:4, Interesting)
Tracey Kidder also wrote Mountains Beyond Mountains [wikipedia.org], about Dr. Paul Farmer and the work of his medical non-profit Partners In Health. Another excellent read.
Also required reading in history of technology (Score:2)
Also assigned reading in Michael Mahoney's course on the history of science and technology at Princeton circa 1984. Although I had read it already -- and found it inspiring.
RIP Tracy Kidder.
And also RIP Professor Mahoney who died in 2008 at the relatively young age of 69 -- just when a historian is typically getting very productive.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
https://www.dailyprincetonian.... [dailyprincetonian.com]
"Histories of Computing"
https://www.hup.harvard.edu/bo... [harvard.edu]
"Computer technology is pervasive in the modern world,
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A tangent on another historian of science and technology I enjoyed taking a course from and who wrote about information technology and who died relatively way too young:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
"James Ralph Beniger (December 16, 1946 -- April 12, 2010) was an American historian and sociologist and Professor of Communications and Sociology at the Annenberg School for Communication at the University of Southern California, particularly known for his early work on the histo
XYZZY (Score:3)
'Soul' is utterly briliant (Score:4, Insightful)
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That's Mr. Kidder, not Ms. I always thought otherwise as well until I just now clicked the links.
Really great book (Score:3)
It combines 2 things, very good portraits of the people designing computers, and very good "bird's eye views" of how computers work. Particularly the later is great as the author managed to distill the core of each concept into something even a lay-person can swallow and understand. It's didactical simplification to the point and not beyond it. So what he says is stays correct, only ignoring things that are not important.
late 1970s (Score:3)
The DG Eclipse and the DEC VAX were released in the late 1970s.
For a decade, the DEC salesforce, had any easy time selling machines. One of my sales was for $3M in 1983.
QEPD (Score:3)
Reading that book (or, more exactly, its "Reader's Digest", the book itself I read a long while afterwards) was what made me want to become an Electronics Engineer
One of the most influential books in my life. Perhaps, the most influential one.
GodSpeed Mr. Kidder
Realistic view of development atmosphere (Score:4, Informative)
This book is the most realistic picture of the atmosphere in a real industrial development project that I ever have encountered -- outside my own experience of about 30 years doing this stuff. Every student contemplating a career doing this sort of work should read it, and so should everyone curious about what computer hardware and software development is really like.
This book got me hooked in the world of computers (Score:1)
An Eclipse with a bag in the side (Score:1)
One of my absolute favorite quotes
Re: An Eclipse with a bag in the side (Score:1)
Typo! Should be An Eclipse with a bag on the side