"The Soul of a New Machine" is a non-fiction book written by Tracy Kidder and published in 1981. It chronicles …
@fetch I liked this! had some small critiques I can share if you want, but overall it was a great story well told
@fetch the critiques: I would have liked it to talk more about how people actually used the mini- and microcomputers of the day, what they did with them, and not just the business side. It was also anticlimactic to realize that despite all these heroic efforts to build the computer they're working on in the book, the company failed soon after anyway. But it's a fun time capsule, dated in some ways (like how he didactically explains the concept of software compatibility) and shockingly familiar in others, like the company bemoaning that as much as it wanted to hire women engineers, they were in short supply (in 1978). I really sympathized with the characters, the pressure they were under.
