UNIX: A History and A Memoir

A concise work outlining the history of UNIX, the utilities and languages that it led to the creation of (awk, make, troff, etc.), the related people and culture surrounding it, and some of its newer implementations (BSD, GNU/Linux, Minix). It doesn't bog you down with technical details whilst still providing a good explanation of UNIX and its tools. I thoroughly reccommend it if you have any interest in learning more about the origins of UNIX. It's worth noting that the print quality of the cover is terrible, but I imagine this is the fault of Amazon, who publish the book through Kindle Direct Publishing.

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution

Hackers aims to document the history of hacker subculture up to that point in history, and is split into three main sections covering the very earliest hackers at MIT in the 50s and 60s, the personal computer pioneers of the 70s, and the "third generation hackers" developing games for personal computers in the 80s.

The first section really is fascinating, it covers a part of hacker history I was nearly completely unfamiliar with. The core principles of the so-called 'hacker ethic' are described here, as well as a few of the quirks of hackers/compsci enthusiasts as a group (penchant for Chinese takeaway, dislike of authority, and, unfortunately, poor luck in love!)

The second section focuses on the likes of Ed Roberts, Lee Felsenstein, the Homebrew Computer Club, and (later on), Steve Wozniak and Apple. This part I find fascinating, as it focuses on parts of this history that are often lesser known: the Altair and Apple machines are well-documented, but not the Sol-20!

The final major section mostly documents the early years of Sierra On-Line, who developed and published games for home computers of the 80s. This section I found the least interesting - in fact I put the book down for a while, picking it up again to finish it off after reading UNIX: A History and a Memoir (see above). It's still a worthwhile read if you're interested in Sierra specifically, but skippable if you're only interested in hacker culture.

Overall, Hackers is a fab read, and I definitely reccomend it! The first two sections in particular are brilliant, though the section on Sierra feels like a slightly odd inclusion, it's not really about hacker culture in general.

My friend Rosia mentioned a critique of this book, as well as hacker culture in general, which you can find here. The speaker, Allison Parish, makes some good points about fundamental problems with the hacker ethic, and what a new hacker ethic might look like.