Chill Out Books for Software Dev

I like to read books but easily get bored of those long ones.Well got bore of those heavyweight books like sicp or clrs and need something to relax and still be related to software. Turns out there are many great things in the store. Here is a few of them that I enjoyed and found great.

The Soul of a New Machine

by Tracy Kidder

This book won Pulitzer Prize so that’s says a lot. It follows engineers at Data General Eclipse which have embarked on an incredible journey to make new 32 bit Computer. These engineers are not the regular guys. They are as savvy as they are cool. Their exceptional level of assembly programming matches with their proficeny in terminal games. Not only the feats are great but the author had told the story in a skill matching with these iconoclast people and the machine itself.

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

by Charles Petzold

This is one of my favourite. This kind of answered my great and troubling question of how computers work and were made. Well the books start from morse code (which is super cool if you don’t know) to telegram and then gates to finally a kind of working computer. The explanation is clear and author does not smatter but rather explains things at a good detailed level and in a fun way.

Life 3.0

by Max Tegmark

Love to make hypothetical 1984 or utopian situations and how this changes might happen. Well Life 3.0 does some of it while also discussing were the AI will go and why to discuss the role and development of AI is more important than ever, also why more people are needed to be included. The book also provides a model of how to look at AI and why many things may be theoritically possible or impossible without requiring to know those models.

Homo Deus

by yuval noah harari

Well the book dosen’t touches the computer related stuff. What it does is it discusses the topics were technology and other influencers will change how we will live. Some topics like imortality covers biology but overall due to the fact the book is written by probably one of the greatest writer of the century and on the future, the book is worth its time.

Hackers: Heroes of the Computer Revolution

by Steven Levy

So you are a millennial and wanna see how the great old stuff was done (the col hipster way!). This books is all about the revoulutionary and probably the most important cultural in tech world “the hacker culture”. There is this article and this by the legends and the greates hackers which are also great and realated.