The Soul of a New Machine

| 4.31 | 7,235 ratings and reviews

Recommended by Satya Nadella, Stephen Baker, Scott Johnson, and 3 others. See all reviews

Ranked #13 in Computer, Ranked #20 in Software Architecture — see more rankings.

The computer revolution brought with it new methods of getting work done—just look at today's news for reports of hard-driven, highly-motivated young software and online commerce developers who sacrifice evenings and weekends to meet impossible deadlines. Tracy Kidder got a preview of this world in the late 1970s when he observed the engineers of Data General design and build a new 32-bit minicomputer in just one year. His thoughtful, prescient book, The Soul of a New Machine, tells stories of 35-year-old "veteran" engineers hiring recent college graduates and encouraging them to work... more
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Reviews and Recommendations

We've comprehensively compiled reviews of The Soul of a New Machine from the world's leading experts.

Satya Nadella CEO/MicrosoftRecommends this book

Stephen Baker A marvelously detailed book, and I found it very inspiring. An interesting way of looking at how computing has utterly changed in the last 30 years. (Source)

Scott Johnson Tracy Kidder's The Soul of a New Machine. This was the first book that really took a deep dive into the process of creating a high tech product from scratch. Tracy really humanized the engineering process and made me realize that was the type of industry where I wanted to be. (Source)

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