Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution - 25th Anniversary Edition

I first read this book in the early/mid 1980s when I was a Navy electronic tech. One shipmate had the Texas Instruments computer, another had the Atari 800XL. I got my 800XL shortly after. We were playing games from the companies detailed in this book. It was great reading of the authors of our games, putting details to the names. Learning how the whole "PC Revolution began, and the earlier history of the MIT whizkids and the TMRC. I was just really getting into it in 1984 when the bottom dropped out of the electronic/computer game industry, nearly ending it. Luckily it made a comeback. The games got better as the machines were upgraded and improved. Being on the fringe of hacking myself, I could see the very different approaches of Commodore and Atari management, exactly as detailed in the book. Actually living through this while reading Levi's book mde it much more "real" and appropos to me. I can understand people much later being less impressed, as they don't have the context of these events actually playing out.I look forward to rereading it, and seeing what new info is presented. This book played a huge part in my going into a 24 year IT career after leaving the Navy. But programming now has become a heartless industry compared to how it was twenty-plus years ago. Wish I'd been born earlier, in time to take part in the earlier history of hacking and programming.

I was recommended this book by a colleague. I love it too. It is about the initial stages of the computer revolution, yet reads more like a collection of entertaining short stories. It is far from a dry read. Included in the front are short descriptions about people and devices mentioned or interviewed. If you're a software developer this actually explains why IDEs mark errors with red. If you're a gamer, you'll learn about the first video game. (It wasn't Pong). I haven't red the entire thing yet, but it's still a good read. External links give you further details and some are entertaining. The book may be titled hackers, but there isn't anything illegal or even ill-intented. It was about the pursuit for knowledge and efficiency. This is a must for serious software engineers and computer science. If for nothing else then leisurely reading. There is a fair amount of discussion of assembly language, which is seldom covered in even college classes, usually one class for a single assignment or chapter. Not much is explained in detail so the education level to understand the book completely is fairly high. There are a bunch of inside jokes, but I do think that an average college student could understand 90-95% of the book.

The book is funny, informative and impossible to put down! Having grown up through the infancy of personal computers, including nearly a one-year stint as a TRS-80 salesman, I laughed often out loud as I followed the adventures of Greenblatt, Gosper and dozens of others in Levy's tales. No other book I have read gives the genealogy of both hardware and software in their embryonic periods so well as this tome. "Hackers" now has a much friendlier connotation for me than it once did now that I appreciate the openness and positive nature of the Hacker Ethic. The news media have made the hackers out as scum/criminals/bandits/general bad guys - Levy casts them in a much different light.The book is great for its humor and history in the 96th percentile of each category! Buy it and be prepared to laugh and learn!

Wow what a very wild history the computers and its developers and programmers have experienced in such a short amount of time. This book sums up then goes into great detail featuring key people whose influence and passion in the development, growth, and promoting of the endless possibilities of computers has driven the world to live in ways clearly unpredictable.

Hackers by Steven Levy is an excellent and rich book detailing the timeline of computer hackers and the hacker ethic. The book starts with the various exploits of MIT hackers and the model railroad club in the early 1950s working IBM computers such as the 704, and the infamous TX-0. The book travels all the way to the 1980s and the Siera On-Line game company and the death of the open source hacker ethic. The book does an excellent job of personalizing the signature characters of the computer revolution proving the point that excellent hackers aren't necessarily the people who graduated with straight A's from MIT, Harvard, or Stanford. The book seems personal but also extremely informative while inspiring the same creativity that drew the hackers of the 20th century to computers.Hackers also does an excellent job of promoting and almost idealizing the infamous Hacker Ethic developed initially in the 1950s by the first computer hackers. The ethic consists of a focus on open source technology, cooperation, and an intense disapproval of the corporatization of computer software.Overall, Hackers is an excellent book if you enjoy computing history and getting into the nitty gritty of how many of the worlds most popular software innovations came to be.

I have a large collection of books regarding the "computer revolution" and was afraid that this will be overlapping with certain stories. I was wrong. While it slightly touches those anticipated overlapped stories, it mainly deals with the "underdogs" of the revolution, slightly mentioning succesful business entrapeneurs such as Steve Jobbs, Bill Gates, and John Carmack. It overly deals with the true meaning of hackers and their ethic, as their embrace of their philosophy made today's technology as it is. Almost 500 pages long with no pictures, it is written in a style that makes you a part of the past, as you where one of the "hackers" per se. Anyone who owns a computer should read this book to understand the word the media has slung into an incorrect meaning and to find more appreciation for their workstation besides browsing Facebook!