I read this book when I was 18 (well over a decade ago) but I remember it being an easy and interesting read, and it gave me an appreciation of just how much work goes into creating something as advanced as a computer machine.

It's hard to explain to a non-engineer what an engineer does, and how it feels to work as an engineer. This book does a wonderful job in that regard, showing how it was like for a group of engineers and their managers in the nascent decades of the computer industry, who took themselves to build a new computer in a rather short time.

The book does not belabor much with the technical (only to provide a context), but bears more into the lives and work relationships of the engineers.

Readers familiars with startups today may find a lot of parallels between then (1978) and now, perhaps recognizing that while computers got order of magnitude times faster, the teams and people who design computer systems still going through similar processes.

I hate when I start a review and it gets lost! This is a 3.5 ⭐️ read for me. Don’t get me wrong, the writing is excellent, but the subject matter another story. There isn’t the teensiest bit of engineering ability in my bones; I can barely run the TV remote! I needed to read a book with a pink cover and found this on my shelves where it has sat gathering dust for a very long time. This book is all about the intricacies required of a team to build a minicomputer back in the late ‘70’s. Back when computers were designed for businesses and everyone didn’t own their own laptop and/or iPads. Lots of computer gibberish, arithmetic, algorithms, and acronyms. I did find the team members backgrounds and interaction interesting, though. All in all, the information herein is somewhat dated, and I have another donation for my Good Will pile.

An incredible look at what is takes to get a product out the door. This book chronicles the attempts by Tom West at Data General to get his business to design and build a viable computer in late seventies. It is extremely interesting on in the way that it showed the pressure that these teams were under at the time and also a look at the minicomputer-era of computers, right before the personal computing era took off. Incredibly well written, this book would be enjoyed by anyone with a general interest in computers.

It got repetitive in the middle but I thought it was a great experience. The author does a great job of breathing life into what could have been a snooze fest. A neat story of a team coming together that is still relevant today.

This book talks about the team that creates a new computer. The book is read a lot by MBA students. I can see where putting a team together to do software and hardware is hard work. There are many times when the unexpected comes up and you are late on projects. I thought it was interesting the dynamics of the different teams and how the managers of the teams dealt with people.

just finished reading Tracy Kidder’s The Soul of A New Machine book, which was highly recommended by a couple of people I follow online. My interest in the history of computers is relatively nascent. It’s only in recent years that I cultivated a deep interest in the history of computing and went back in time to learn more about the origin of computers and the story of innovation labs that changed the world. Apart from this, another relevant book I read was The Dream Machine about J.C.R. Licklider, covering his rich legacy and contributions in many areas of personal computers and today’s internet. That book was fantastic and very soon became one of my favorites in that genre.

To my surprise, “The Soul of a New Machine” exceeded my expectation in all possible ways. It’s an exceptionally well-written book that does an outstanding job in storytelling, exploring the process of human creativity and character building. A page-turner with many interesting high-level details on hardware and software engineering in early computers. I read the book mostly at night, before going to bed, and since the book was so engaging, I often had to pass my sleep time (sadly making it harder to wake up early for my morning workout) and stay late to not disconnect from the storyline. Since I was so inspired by this book, I thought it would be helpful to distill my learnings into words and share them with a broader audience in case other technologists find it intriguing.

The book is about a group of engineers who worked in a computer company called Data General in the 1970s. The team of engineers consisting of “Hardy Boys” (hardware team) and “Microkids” (software/microcode team) is led by the book’s protagonist Tom West who wants to build a new microcomputer. These were when personal computers were booming, with multiple players trying to make a dent in the market and invent the next cheaper, faster, and smaller computer. Computers in the 1970s were quite different from personal computers now, they were slower, and often programmers had to wait days for their turn to run programs with punch cards. There was no computer interactivity, and it was only the invention of time-sharing that enabled multi-tasking, allowing multiple people to work on a computer simultaneously by sharing the computer resources. In addition, computers were expensive, and not every company could afford them, and even if they did, it required an entire office room to store them due to their enormous size.

The book highlights the times in Data General when computers were moving from 16-bit to 32-bit systems and when Tom West convinced the company leadership to form a new team to work on a new 32-bit computer which was supposed to have more memory and faster central processing unit. The project was code-named “Eagle”. The book primarily discusses this process and how the team makes progress under strict deadlines. Apart from designing, building, and debugging the microcomputer, the book chronicles the work lives of engineers and how they navigate their relationships with their boss and co-workers under tremendous pressure.

The people management and what motivated the Eagle team were quite surprising for me because, in many ways, it was pretty different from what I’ve seen or experienced as a software engineer working in a tech company. Reading about human interactions and challenges, I’d naturally take parallels and try to compare them with my own experience. It made me think that our work environments and perception of work have changed quite drastically over the past five decades and, in some ways, not necessarily to the advantage of innovation.

What motivated engineers in the Eagle team in the 1970s wasn’t the compensation, benefits, or work-life balance but rather the collective mission to create something delightful for the world. They had a common goal and showed tremendous belief in their work. They were confident they could invent the new computer without realizing all its challenges. During the final stages of the project, when the deadline was pressing, some engineers did all-nighters to test and debug the new computer without complaining because they were too proud of their work and what they were after. In the author’s interviews, they mentioned fulfilling work as the number one driver of their happiness at work.

Building a new 32-bit computer required solving complex technical problems, often with novel solutions. The Eagle team would often form pairs and solve the problems together, but sometimes there will be a single engineer working days and nights to build a new simulator for the machine so the team could iterate faster. Some of the engineers in the team were new grads who saw the project as a huge opportunity to work alongside experienced engineers and learn from them. They saw their work as an experience for a lifetime.

Most engineers in the Eagle team contributed across the multiple layers of the stack, which you don’t often see in our industry now, where engineers specialize in frontend or backend technologies. There you have software engineers willing to go through the rabbit hole of hardware trying to debug bugs and find solutions.

The Eagle team worked hard because they cared about their craft and work. This created a culture of trust between engineers and management, giving engineers more autonomy in decision-making.

Seeing a group of people working together towards a common goal inspires me because it’s beautiful. I do want to maximize such experiences in my life where I can look back and be proud of my work regardless of how hard I worked or how many all-nighters I had to put up with.

I loved the book and highly recommend it to anyone curious about computers, hard work, and innovation. I think it’s essential that many engineers read books like this so they can take inspiration from the computer pioneers and find the hidden soul of work.

Going into this book completely blind was a very strange experience. It took a few pages understand what the book was about and it took until the last chapter to understand why it was written.
But it was an enjoyable read non the less. It was informative and interesting.

It's surprising how a book from 1981 about a team of engineers developing a new computer (a competitor to the DEC VAX) is still very relevant and entertaining. Obviously the technical details reflect the technology of the 1970s (the features of the new machines - a 32-bit architecture with protection rings and support to threads are very common today), but what gave a Pulitzer Prize to this book is the description of the people involved in the development process, what motivated them and how is the life in the engineering department of a hardware company.

If Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution tells the early computers history from the academic, hobbyist and domestic point-of-view, The Soul of a New Machine chronicles the other side, the commercial/industry perspective. And it's easy to perceive, common and central to both books, the "Hacker Ethics", the desire of solving new and interesting problems and develop new machines - something that persists to this day.

Very well written. Interesting characters. But I just can’t get interested in computers. So not my kind of book.

Romanticizes a very toxic work environment filled with privileged males. The narrative was good enough for me to finish it, though.

(listened to the audiobook version)

After starting this twice and not following through, I decided to try the audiobook version for the third time. I'm glad I did, as I found the story to be really interesting and the author did a great job of telling it.

The first chapter or spent a lot of time establishing context, which is probably why I had a couple of false starts. Stick with it, you'll soon get invested in the story and not want to put it down.

The book follows the people (mainly engineers and managers) involved in designing, building and shipping a new minicomputer (a 1970's thing, according to the book) while under pretty serious time and resource constraints.

It's non-fiction, you can look up the company, the people, the computer. Surprisingly, for the type of book it was, the author really did a great job of capturing the characters of those involved and delivering the truth of a project as an entertaining narrative.

As is the case with many good stories - books, movies, or otherwise - I was overcome with a sense of emptiness and sadness when I reached the end. Not just because it was over, but also just how things ended for the computer, the people who built it, and even Data General.