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Comment by AlbertCory | Hacker News Reader

First published in 1985?

For more reading:

Fumbling the Future: not all that good; reads like a B-school case study

Dealers of Lightning: excellent history

Inventing the Future (by me!): what it was actually like to be there in the trenches. Fictionalized, but all facts are accurate. Foreword by David C. Smith, the guy who invented icons. That's his son on the cover, playing MazeWar on an Alto.

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I commented Dealers in parallel, because of the narrative I'd argue it's one of the best tech histories every written. While Soul of the Machine was better reviewed, Dealers was more compelling.

I did enjoy your book by the way - thank you for writing it.

Thank you.

re Soul: Dick Sonderegger, whom I interviewed at [1], knew the real people at Data General who were featured in it. They kinda despised Tracy Kidder.

[1] https://operationcode.org/podcast#dick-sonderegger-link

I can understand why - Tracy Kidder made everyone involved with the MV/8000 look bad. The narrative was not compelling either frankly, I've never understood why people found the book so compelling.

Dealers makes everyone look good more or less - like it clearly explained to me why Xerox could never figure out how to commercialize the PARC innovations. The single largest issue appeared to be the incentives the sales force had were not aligned to the kind of products PARC could develop. (though its clear there were other issues with the capacity of PARC to productize something)

A faster Alto with a general purpose operating system and the existing document preparation tools, probably would have significantly outsold the Star - but again, would the Xerox sales force known how to sell that product? I don't think so, and thats the underlying problem.

The Star appeared to have just suffered from the Second System Effect, which compounded the other issues Xerox had.

Very astute analysis. I cover these exact issues as they manifested.

I used to say "Star has done for object-oriented programming what Three Mile Island did for nuclear power."

Obviously not, though, since OOP grew & prospered on its own. I cover our struggles using OOP with a non-object oriented language in exhaustive detail, too.

I visited the "Blue Room" as a young coder and was treated with respect.. very positive for me and much appreciated.

I recommend "The Dream Machine" by Mitchell Waldrop. It is excellent (and recommended by Alan Kay himself).

Second this. I bought it when Alan Kay recommended it here.

https://www.albertcory.io

I'll add the Innovators by Walter Isaacson to the list as a general take on persons involved in the history of computing. It was well written and the stories within were exciting to read.

Cool. Just bought this.

A note for folks, the eBook of "Inventing the Future" is $US 3.95 or it can be read on Kindle Unlimited

It's great when people price eBooks cheaply like this.

LOL. Thanks. I made it cheap since it's my first book :)

"The Big Bucks" (about the 80's & the birth of the Internet) is going to be out in a few days, and it'll be more. Why? Because I think for my audience, the price doesn't matter as much, and so my income from writing might turn positive someday (and thus it won't be a "hobby" to the IRS).

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