Customer Reviews

Go to: The Story of the Math Majors, Bridge Players, Engineers, Chess Wizards, Scientists and Iconoclasts who were the Hero Programmers of the Software Revolution

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I enjoyed this book very much. It was certainly true that nobody could predict who would be a good programmers. I must confess that I picked those who were intelligent and enthusiastic. It sounds like a jungle out there.

Now for my hot buttons. Why am I not surprised that the history is wrong? It's because the author suffers from the writers' "Curse," assuming things written down are the truth. Johnny von Neumann never even saw the ENIAC until its design was fixed and the system almost built. He did consult with Dick Clippinger and his programming group from 1947/48 when they turned the ENIAC into a stored program computer. At that time, people were presenting various instruction sets for computers and von Neumann suggested a one-address code with a central accumulator architecture for the ENIAC, which we used. My group at the Moore School was under contract to do the ENIAC programming. Actually, Dick Clippinger, Adele Goldstine and I, with some help from DRs. Giese and Galbraith from Aberdeen did the actual programming.

When von Neumann saw the ENIAC, he was excited by it and, learning Pres Eckert and John Mauchly and their design team were already at work on EDVAC, the ENIAC successor, he asked if he could sit in on the meetings. The EDVAC design already included the stored-program concept. See Eckert's interview with Peter Vogt for the Smithsonian Computer History Project. After a number of meetings, von Newmann skipped some meetings to go to Las Alamos, but he sent back the article, which Pres and John took as an internal document, summarizing the content of the meetings. Other members of the team were not allowed to write or talk about it. Goldstine, who was the Security Officer distributed von Neumann's article widely. Some Security Officer. Both Goldstine and von Neumann came from the University World where publishing is used to stake out claims. Both knew exactly what they were doing. They betrayed their colleagues and continued to do so. When Pres and John applied for an EDVAC patent, they discovered that this enterprising duo had already applied. Not too many people took von Newmann seriously when he said he did it to ensure that it remained in the public domain and not used for commercial purposes. Apparently, Goldstine felt von Newmann was a better meal ticket than one from Pres and John. He was wrong. Pres and John went on to develop BINAC, the first stored program computer. Yes, it ran for 48 hours without an error in March 1949. Reported in the Franklin Institute newsletter. Then, they went on to build the first electronic commercial computer. As far as I know, nobody, other than the organizations von Newmann consulted with, ever built the Johnniac while the computer industry switched with UNIVAC to the commercial world.

I could continue on, but I know I am unfair to expect you to buck the tide. However, I am now 77 years old and I feel that someone should tell the truth, and if not me, who?

For a narrative history of computer programming, from the pre-Fortran days to the present, this book does a remarkably good job. It describes in vivid, readable fashion the people, the period, and the problems they solved. It also gives the reader a real sense of the kind of creativity involved in programming, the excitement and what it takes. The book is filled with neat historical tidbits (from the origins of the term "beta" to the notes of Charles Simonyi, a Xerox PARC refugee who joined Microsoft, to Bill Gates, laying out much of that company's plans for the next 20 years). For anyone interested in software, and the extraordinary cast of characters behind the technology, this book is a clear, well-written, authorative survey. It covers a lot of ground -- and it it does it awfully well!

This is a good book on the technical and intellectual development of system and utility software from Fortran days to now. It is meant to be an overview of some of the high lights of the technical developments and most interestingly the people and the players. The author purposefully does not cover application software and the huge effort and development in those areas whether in a product like Mathematica or in computational fluid dynamics programs. He certainly captures the flavor of the operating system, compiler, and utility developments that were so critical to progress in computers.

The book is strongest where the history is known. Present day developments such as Linux and open software along with the key people are discussed in the last chapter, but no one knows yet what importance will come of that, and this is left up in the air.

There are not that many books that range over the history of software development as this one does. Lohr is no gee whiz amateur; this is a solid professional job where the flavor of a development is really captured (at least in my view). One can just imagine how the development of Fortran opened up immense possibilities in simulation and modeling. Good word processors had broad applications and made life much easier for all of us. Lohr chooses his subject and enlivens it.

He discusses the people involved in many of the developments with a varying degree of detail, so we capture some of the flavor of the personalities. This is done well without giving us ranging biographies or too much psychoanalysis. This is a book well worth reading.

As a lifelong software developer, avid history buff, and now, author, I looked forward to this book, as it combines the two great loves of my life - code and history. Unfortunately, my "third" hat - author - causes me to cringe in abject horror when reading this volume. The book DOES contain interesting information about the evolution and revolutions of software development. The book DOES contain interesting anecdotes and quotes of the software gods. The book is just NOT a very good read. Programmers: read Stroustrup's DESIGN AND EVOLUTION OF C++ if you want to see inside the mind of a software god. Everyone else, read someting more like HACKERS (Levy's - NOT the movie) for a powerful, interesting historical tome.
Written from the perspective of a journalist, each chapter iterates and re-iterates through the basic definitions of computer terms: what is an operating system?, etc. Far too much explanation, and far too little exploration of the topics creates a read much like that of a high school history report. There is none of the emotion and excitement of Levy's HACKERS, nor, in fact, any of the depth. This seems to be the result of a long research project, spent reading articles and gleaning quotes, rather than a labor of love.
Certainly, the author covers the subject, but in a manner so devoid of personal interest, it leaves all but the most concerted reader cold. Personally, I've picked up the book three times now, and skimmed various chapters. I'm finally giving up; the book is just not a good read, no matter the hard work and good intentions.

He never says so, but Steve Lohr has set out to do for the profession of
computer programming what Robert Heilbroner did for economics in his "The
Worldly Philosophers," ie explain the discipline mainly through the stories of its
leading practitioners and the problems they addressed.
For the most part, he succeeds admirably. There are several fine
histories of computing, but none until `Go To' that focused entirely on
software. Its narrative is the evolution of programming over the years and it
covers a lot of ground, unlike the more focused approach found in books like
Steven Levy's "Hackers" (the hardware and software innovation that came from
MIT) or Michael Hiltzik's "Dealers of Lightning" (Xerox PARC as the
intellectual birthplace of personal computing).
Lohr nods to previous developments, but his narrative really begins with the
team led by John Backus that developed Fortran. It continues into the 1960s and
the sense of limitless horizons at the time, with its enthusiasm for artificial
intelligence. Then comes COBOL, the achievement and disillusionment of IBM's
360 Operating System, the "software crisis" of the late 1960s and the rise of
software engineering. And on it goes, the story of Ken Thompson and Dennis
Ritchie developing Unix and C at Bell Labs, Bjarne Stroustrup creating C++,
James Gosling leading the development of Java.
The well-worked ground is handled in non-obvious ways. Bill Gates and Microsoft
are seen through the prism of the rise of BASIC from its Dartmouth origins to
its Wild West days of the early microcomputer industry to its domestication as
Visual Basic. The Xerox PARC contribution is handled in a long, fascinating
profile of Charles Simonyi, a Hungarian teenager who defected to the West and
whose programming skills took him to Berkeley, Stanford and PARC, where he
created Bravo, the predecessor to Microsoft's Word.
The open-source phenomenon begins with the story of the Apache project, segues
to Richard Stallman and Linus Torvalds and ends with IBM's pragmatic embrace of
Linux.
Judging from the source notes, if a person was alive, Lohr interviewed
his subject, often repeatedly. If not, he consulted the oral histories and the
like at places like the Babbage Institute and the Computer Museum.
The writing is clear, often elegant and never overwrought. The only
breathless writing is the book's title, which seems to be a stretch by a
publishing house's marketers, hoping to attract a broader audience by
portraying programmers as the stereotype of eccentric nerds.
`Go To' is entertaining, but in a cerebral sort of way. It has personal and
historical details that most programmers will find new, but its explanations of
some of the basic principles of programming will help make software more
accessible to interested general readers.

This book isn't aimed specifically at experienced programmers, but rather at the general public. My mom could read it. That doesn't even mean it's a bad book if you are a programmer. It's an amazing software-history crash course and a must for younger programmers. The emphasis is on the people and concepts, not on technicalities. This is why I disagree with the other reviewer who suggested "The Design and Evolution of C++" instead of this book. While Stroustrup's document is also a must for any serious programmer, it only covers the history of C++, and his motivations for particular features of the language. GOTO on the other hand gives a birds-eye view of software and software development from the ENIAC to open-source Linux in a simple and concise way.

I found the writing to be good and funny, making it an enjoyable read. Quotes are used very well and the information that each page is full of is well layed out on the length of the book. The author stays objective and doesn't impose you his opinion as some of the more "controversial" topics are often revisited from different perspectives, giving you the chance to make your own mind.

An enjoyable and instructive book.

Whether you cut code for a living or just have an avocational interest in software and its history, Steve Lohr's book is the best compendium I've come across. A history of computer science from the perspective of the people who made it, "Go To" is a reasonably engaging look at the development of computer programming and the personalities that shaped (and continue to shape) it.

The frustration alluded to above stems from the fact that, with a competent editor and some facility with any of the word processing software applications referred to throughout, this could have been an excellent read. Instead, it all too often feels as though each chapter were written in isolation. The same people are introduced multiple times and definitions are repeated with a frequency that becomes annoying. As for typos, the book is replete with them. One hopes Mr. Lohr was more careful with his facts than his proof-reading.

Still, if this is an area that interests you, "Go To" is ultimately worth the aggravation.

The writer, a NY Times technology correspondent, provides a 250-page chronology of computer operating systems and software languages from the early post-WWII years until 2001. A few important applications such as VisiCalc and Word are also covered. Brief mention is made of hardware trends that created the environment for software engineering.

This is a "people" book. Brief biographical sketches of the key players are followed by a description of the most basic characteristics of each software item and a brief chronology of its emergence into the marketplace. There is little in the way of analysis and little personal opinion.

The book reads like a long Britannica article and is a suitable overview and reference for serious students of technology but more than a little boring for the general reader.

I was surprised that Gary Kildall only received half of one sentence. His Digital Research Company and its early microcomputer operating system, CP/M, was an early business success. A variant of CP/M, Seattle Computer Products 86-DOS, was the backbone of Gates' DOS for the IBM PC.

Great book with historical details in a laymen language. This is the country that graduates about 1.1 million students per year in its 3,600 colleges/universities but only 1.5% major in Computer Information Sciences and related fields. To appreciate the amount of effort each programming language is used in the commerical or industrial application, and to fully engage in the development of these applications remain to be the challenge for all of us. I have taught and trained 5400+ people in the last 25 years in 18 colleges and companies. but only a handful of them are Computer majors (3%). This book hopefully will bring more young people to major in Computer Information Systems and to develop better programs to be used by the society at large.

This book ranks among the best in the history of technology and one of the few that specifically addresses software. Most other histories of technology or computing center on hardware, with some even focusing on a single computer such as the Eniac, the Difference Engine or Apple. But recognize that hardware commoditizes over time, while good software largely holds its value. Software creates fortunes but also deeply felt-opinions about quality, and as Lohr demonstrates, a constant stream of innovation. The book showcases the creators of breakthrough operating systems and applications, and makes clear their contributions to the rise of the computer industry. It is worthwhile for readers following technology, business, current events and even law and philosophy- the concepts have indeed become major disruptions in the history of ideas.