‘Real’ Programmers
The author sounds like a stereotypical old man who thinks everything good is from his generation and everything else is just garbage. This is my first impression of the essay. However, it’s difficult to criticize this macho mentality because back then it was really hard. The story of Seymour Cray is amazing. To program an Operating System on your own is a feat in and of itself. But without errors is just unheard of.
The Early Hackers
It’s really interesting to see the history of the word hacker. Right now the word has a really skewed meaning that hollywood films gave them. It’s also interesing that research in AI dates back to the 1980s.
It’s also intersting to know a little bit more about LISP. I’ve heard some things about this programming language and it’s intersting for me to know more about because it really was (and still is) an important programming language
The Rise of Unix
This chapter talks a lot about things that I actually know. In the previous chapter there was a lot of talk about ITS and other computers from the MIT, they talk about how big and famous these are but I have not heard about none of those machines. However, in this chapter they talk (obviously) about the ‘C’ programming language. I really like that they talk about C because I can relate it with my Operating Systems course. The Operating System that we are using is compiled also in C.
The End of Elder Days
This chapter was really boring. Nothing in the chapter really captured my attention. The only cool thing about it is the recursive acronym. UNG. I’ve never heard about a recursive acronym.
The Great Web Explosion
It’s interesting that in this chapter the focus is the rise of the internet as we know it today. It feels like it was a long time ago but Amazon was killing it by 1999 Amazon had 1.6 billion dollars in revenue.
References
Cellar Door Blog 