This book is so good. It's about building early computers but it feels just like tech does today in the way it's described. Which make it feel like this bigger context you're reading into. That even before computers were mainstream, there were still those who tinkered.

Two things are especially memorable to me. One is a casual remark in the book that they found the best way to get things done is to pair someone very experienced and cynical with someone very inexperienced and naive. Combined they would get lots done together compared to either alone. I think this is still true today.

The other thing is the intro. It's about the head of the project getting a group together and renting a sailboat on vacation. On the sailboat the get tossed and at times feel like they barely survived and it ends with someone saying "if this was his vacation...what did this man do for fun!?"

Good share. Haven't read but looking at the wiki entry it's an interesting book, Technology requires a culture to sustain it.

To use a fancy word there's a "noosphere" around that carries knowledge and lore along with it.

Plus the usual kind of Deming wisdom about real knowledge organisation:

    "in many ways opposite of traditional management...innovations are
    started at the grassroots level.", and "people will give their best
    when the work itself is challenging and rewarding."

That atmosphere is still around in engineering teams in smaller companies where there's a good range of advancement within engineering and some stable products so there's a stream of old-timers and apprentices building and exchanging chops.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noosphere

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Edwards_Deming

"a great read" - Almost underselling it. It won the Pulitzer for non-fiction that year.

One of my top 5 favorite books of all time - the audiobook version on audible is excellent as well. A lost world - and we are all worse off for it.

Indeed: (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19133653) and (https://auxiliarymemory.com/2017/01/06/rereading-the-soul-of...) ... and that's not the same book :)