Farce Majeure
Adrian HonRIP to a real one.
The Soul of a New Machine may be the best technology book written, but House was a beautifully-crafted and deeply humanist book. Funny too!
Marcin Wichary@adrianhon Oh, no. And, agree on both counts.
James BrittSoul of a New Machine got me to go to college for EE.
(I did, however, end up switching to CS, but the journey started with him.)
Chard Nelson@adrianhon Yeah. "Soul" was the first book I ever read that really communicated what it was like to work in a tech start-up. I reread it last year, and it's still just amazing writing.
Thalia Archibald@adrianhon I got this book last year and have been meaning to read it!
f*cking b*tch club@adrianhon Mountains Beyond Mountains was a terrific read, and my favorite sort of book. I didn’t know much about TB before I read it, and I knew nothing about Paul Farmer.
Michael Keukert@adrianhon That book was formative for me.
lopta@adrianhon I got a lot from SoaNM. Sent my physical copy to my old DEC mentor.
Lot⁴⁹@adrianhon I loved both books.
Dec [{(
)}]@adrianhon
There's a wonderful quote from SoaNM that sums up the frustration of working with smaller units of time:
"no unit of time shorter than a season"
I quoted most of it here in March 2025:
https://mastodon.ie/@dec23k/114174646972936925
Dec [{(:no_ai:)}] (@[email protected])
@[email protected] @[email protected] @[email protected] "Now, one day back at Data General, his weariness focused on the logic analyzer and the small catastrophes that come from trying to build a machine that operates in billionths of a second. On this occasion, he went away from his basement and left this note on his terminal:" "I'm going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season." -- Tracy Kidder, The Soul of a New Machine