Tracy Kidder has died

My favorite little bit of content about SOANM, and Tracy, is attached to this 2013 blog post.

https://tispaquin.blogspot.com/2010/12/1982-interview-with-t...

It's a 1983 report from The Computer Museum (Inside "The Soul of a New Machine" Tracy Kidder and Tom West) which contains the partial transcript of an event that Tracy and Tom did together, that I don't think they did again. When Tracy was asked what he was up to and if he was sick of computers, he said

"I'm digging out from under. I'm writing some articles about atmospheric research. To be honest, I'm a little tired of my book. I put it on my shelf and won't read it again for years. I think I know what's wrong with it. In some sense, writing a book is like building a computer. There are rewards but one of the main ones is that Sisyphean one that if you do one you get to do another. So, I have an opportunity now to write a better one." And he did, he wrote so many books that were, if not better, at least just as good.

Moutains Beyond Mountains[1], another book by Kidder, is even more compelling to me. It's a fascinating story of Paul Farmer, who dedicated his life to fighting infectious disease, especially in Haiti.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mountains_Beyond_Mountains

So I reread the book and my esteem for Kidder's writing went up even more. In the parts of the book where he described Alsing's appearance and demeanor were spot on and captured essential things about Alsing without using a lot of words.

One of the things I recall is Kidder said something like, "Alsing is a tall man, but his mild demeanor and hunched posture presents a much less imposing figure." Sure enough, that is exactly the experience I had with Carl.

His one quote [1] remained in my imagination, and inspired me to learn management. Context: Tom West and his team have acquired a VAX system from DEC, and are reverse-engineering it to see how it is setup.

"...Looking into the VAX, [Tom] West felt he saw the diagram of DEC's corporate organization. He found the VAX too complicated. He did not like, for instance, the system by which various parts of the machine communicated with each other; for his taste, there was too much protocol involved. The machine expressed DEC's cautious, bureaucratic style. [West was pleased with this idea.]..."

It inspired me to become a better manager precisely because I was tearing down bureaucracies in my own work.

Every now and then when I mull over product failures (or successes), I see the product architectures reflect the organizational messes they are born in.

RIP Tracy Kidder.

[1] https://www.scribd.com/document/882178766/Tracy-Kidder-Flyin...

Eventually one of the engineers broke. He left and never came back. He left a note on his desk reading "I am going to live on a farm in Vermont, and I will no longer deal with any unit of time shorter than a season."

At age 21 (and accomplished, since I'd started working in my teens), I mentioned the book to my girlfriend, who was getting into software. As a serious English major, she immediately went and closely read the whole thing. I stupidly hadn't realized that of course she was going to that. And I'd neglected to mention that parts of it are a frustrating slog, as the reader suffers along with the characters/subjects. As a reader with empathy, she came out of the book fatigued and somber.

(But she'd said "an artist needs a craft", so she stuck with the field, was very successful, retired early, and has a second/third career doing something brilliant but much less lucrative.)

Despite learnings from the book and experience, I've had a few such unpleasant project slogs. But more projects that I was able to help make non-unpleasant, because I could anticipate and avert some of the problems.

I think the book probably contributed to my tendency to commit seriously to projects. That's been good and bad. It's good, in that you can learn and do things that you otherwise couldn't. It's bad in that it takes you longer to understand that other people are not you, and the ways that they aren't as committed to the project.

Many/most people are about putting in their hours with some standard of professionalism, such as satisfying whatever metrics (e.g., Jira tickets, sprint tasks, KPIs, OKRs, bonus/promotion criteria) they're told are their job. Those, you can work with, once you know that's their mode. You can also try to improve the company incentives that determine outcomes.

(But occasionally you'll encounter people who are misaligned with project/team/company success in a way you can't find common ground with. You have to recognize that hopelessly toxic situation before it's too late, and get them out of the way of the team of aligned people.)

This book of Tracy Kidder told the story of some early computer industry engineers doing something great, through brains, effort, and perseverance -- and that's a great accomplishment for a book. But an additional accomplishment I think was that a lot of us kids who read it then signed up to "play pinball", with an informed idea of what we were sometimes getting ourselves into, and we signed up anyway.

The hardware was pretty solid, although I'm not sure anyone got around to doing custom microcode that was a selling point. The operating system (AOS/VS, was it?) was OK, but had some edge cases - I remember the filesystem had ACLs (access control lists), but you could create files owned by non-existent users (promptly used for a prank).

Thanks for the tale, it made a dent.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Soul_of_a_New_Machine

https://openlibrary.org/authors/OL20167A

https://www.tracykidder.com/

But I can't help but think that the book helped normalize death-marches in the industry. I'm still recommending it to colleagues, but with the caveat that we are not in a "do or die" situation, so go home and get some good sleep.

Then he said that he wished his son, Tracy, had an interest in real science like me. When I asked what Tracy was doing, Henry described a silly project of hanging out with computer engineers.

I enjoyed "The Soul of a New Machine" when it came out. I always hoped that I could meet Tracy someday. I guess not. He did great work, I hope his father learned to be proud.

Fun fact: Data General was purchased by EMC, which used the name until 2012.

I ended up keeping the book for ~25 years and only at the time of his 50th birthday a few years ago I reckoned we're old enough now. I read the book once more and shipped it to him, literally halfway across the world. Great memories. Thank you for your work, Mr. Kidder.

I kept a copy of the book at hand and read it from time to time whenever I need a boost of morale. It is very inspiring -- although the reality was probably more gruesome and less glorious. I keep roleplaying the roles in the books in my side projects, to a certain degree. Fake it until make it, they said so.

I was late to the party and only read “The Soul of a New Machine” in 2024. It's a great book I think anyone involved in engineering of any kind should give it a read.

It's an especially impressive feat of writing given that it remains accessible and interesting even to people outside of the field. It's a testament to the amount of time he spent essentially embedded with the people at Data General learning about their work and about who they were.

RIP Mr. Kidder.

Black bar?

https://www.tracykidder.com/a-truck-full-of-money.html