The Soul of a New Machine

Just finished “The Soul of a New Machine,” a book I added to the reading list after noticing it on Joe’s desk at the end of HCF. After hearing Bryan Cantrill mention the book in more than one talk, I decided to bump it to the top of the list. The book won the Pulitzer for nonfiction in 1982, and tells the story of two groups of engineers at Data General, one group in North Carolina who were tasked with building a computer to compete with Digital Equipment Corporation, and a group led by the central figure in the book, Tom West, at Data General’s headquarters in MA. West starts a skunkworks project as a backup to the product under development at North Carolina’s lab. Due to failures at NC, West’s project soon becomes critical to the success of Data General. The author embedded himself with various members of the team - many of whom who had just graduated college, had little experience, and essentially lived at work - during an intense period of delivering an early 32-bit microcomputer to market. This book captures the atmosphere of small-team work in the then-emerging microcomputer industry. This book has caused me to reflect on my own experience in software, and, for the first time, contextualize it to a degree within a larger story - one I didn’t know much about. Many of the engineers in the book, now speaking 40 years ago, talk about the attraction to the work, its problems, the artfulness of the practice, in ways that feel familiar. From hunting bugs (there is an example of two engineers debugging a race condition in hardware described towards the end of the book), cutting corners to “get something out the door,” to burnout, this book resonated with the professional aspect of my life in a way I haven’t previously encountered in text. I wish I could have coffee with these folks.