Can someone tell me what is so great about SotNM? (It even won a Pulitzer.) I read a bunch of computer history books last year, and these were all more interesting IMO:
- John Gernter, The Idea Factory
- T.R. Reid, The Chip
- Stephen Levy, Hackers
- Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late
- Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning
- Susan Lammers, Programmers at Work
(Actually I read Levy & Lammers a long time ago, but they're both better than SotNM too.)
Those were full of themes like patents and broad use of technology, interaction between government and private enterprise, monopolies, private research institutes and the need for profit, challenges commercializing your discoveries, the culture around early computer use, etc. They had profiles of famous computer pioneers. They told the history of tech I use every day.
SotNM didn't have anyone I recognized and was about a machine I'd never heard of before. Its biggest theme was how overworked the engineers were (also present in those other books, but not as dominant), at the cost of their health and marriages, with little-to-no reward. It was monotonous and depressing.
So what did other people appreciate about it? With books I don't expect to always "see" everything there on my own, so maybe someone can help me learn what I'm missing.
I actually like SoTM the best out of the list you've posted. More so than the others it's a study of the everyday people of technology, not just the heroes that we've all heard of. Dealers of Lightning, Hackers, and Where Wizards Stay Up Late all do a fine job of telling human stories of technology you use, but SoTM is mainly about the day-to-day life in an industry, the triumphs and failures on a much smaller, more human scale. A similar book could have been written about companies I've worked at, and I'm sure everyone here can say the same. It's less of a history and more of a study of people.
I enjoy this genera though, and I'll add Gertner and Lammers to the list. You may want to try Exploding the Phone by Phil Lapsley (about phone phreaking) and The New New Thing by Michael Lweis.
Thanks! I'll rethink SotNM some in light of that. I did enjoy the parts about "signing up" and the software/hardware interaction (although I wished for more technical details about that.) I didn't think it was bad btw, just not as rich as the others. Also after I wrote that comment I thought, "Monotony isn't always bad. The Iliad and Symphony of Sorrowful Songs are monotonous too. Maybe the form is expressing the long slog of the project." :-) Thanks also for the new recommendations!
SoaNM is an extended portrait of a single product development process/team under severe competitive pressure. The specific technology being developed isn’t the point (though it has to be explained for context) — it’s an attempt at capturing some archetypal characters and narrative of how technology is developed. It’s sort of like Silicon Valley, except instead of satirizing the outrageous nonsense that takes place in the Valley today, it takes seriously the mostly-serious work of development.
When I worked at Apple in the 90s, if someone asked “what is your work like?” I would give them that book.
Just wanted to say I really appreciated this answer and it does let me see the book in a new light. It's interesting how many of the others I listed are not in that kind of competitive environment!
I found SoaNM interesting because I worked on Data General minis, both the 16-bit ones and the 32-bit ones. You might find it interesting to go back and look at the assumptions Data General worked on in light of what happened within a few years. The design team originally wanted something VAX-like, e.g. with an instruction set designed to make assembly coding easy--RISC made that unfashionable. I also found it interesting that the need to preserve the original instruction set within the new meant that the 32-bit minis were stuck with four general-purpose registers and no register-relative byte addressing.
As far as I know, all that was left of DG was bought up by EMC for the sake of DG's Clariion SANs.
I'm actually in your camp :). Reading SotNM wasn't so much more interesting for me and I'd exactly same thought why this book is so much talked about. May be its clever title? The thing is that I've seen this story played out few times over during my career and I invariably leave feeling "ok, so what's new? I could have written that book too.". May be its my lesser ability to appreciate art and leaning too much on consuming just facts. On the other hand I found Showstoppers amazing, gripping and very informative. The scale is very different and that kind of landscape isn't experienced by everyone frequently.
- John Gernter, The Idea Factory
- T.R. Reid, The Chip
- Stephen Levy, Hackers
- Katie Hafner and Matthew Lyon, Where Wizards Stay Up Late
- Michael Hiltzik, Dealers of Lightning
- Susan Lammers, Programmers at Work
(Actually I read Levy & Lammers a long time ago, but they're both better than SotNM too.)
Those were full of themes like patents and broad use of technology, interaction between government and private enterprise, monopolies, private research institutes and the need for profit, challenges commercializing your discoveries, the culture around early computer use, etc. They had profiles of famous computer pioneers. They told the history of tech I use every day.
SotNM didn't have anyone I recognized and was about a machine I'd never heard of before. Its biggest theme was how overworked the engineers were (also present in those other books, but not as dominant), at the cost of their health and marriages, with little-to-no reward. It was monotonous and depressing.
So what did other people appreciate about it? With books I don't expect to always "see" everything there on my own, so maybe someone can help me learn what I'm missing.