29 Nov
2021
29 Nov
'21
9:37 p.m.
I had ordered a used copy of the 2nd edition of the book (came from
the Cherry Hill Public Library!) before the plug for it on the list
came out (because it looked like it covered/credited MIT/Lincoln and
DEC systems in shaping interactive computing).
I found the book a mile wide, and a millimeter deep, and while I've
only randomly scanned it (mostly looking up index references), the
organization by time period shatters the stories of each manufacturer
into snippets, to a point that I'm hard pressed to believe that most
readers would be able to stitch back together in a way that would give
them a coherent idea of any particular strain of computing history.
Nonetheless, I'd be happy to hear that it was assigned reading for CS
students.