Good books in computer science?

[Phil Runciman]

Because it reminds me of when things went badly wrong. IBM360, Von Neumann architecture, no hardware stacks ...

IMHO Burroughs and ICL had better approaches to OS design back then but had less resources to develop their ideas. 

However, mainly this period marked a transition from the excitement and discovery phase of computing to commercial power plays and take-overs. The best ideas in a field tend to get lost in the melee of competition. Early computers were rooted in academia and there was a lot of cross fertilisation of ideas and approaches. IMHO commerce affected layers of the stack where it had no useful contribution to make. Vertical integration warred against sound architecture.

The book has an important message and I recommend that people read it. The book is to me, and possibly only me, an icon representing when things went wrong.



-----Original Message-----
From: Lawrence D'Oliveiro [mailto:ldo at geek-central.gen.new_zealand] 
Sent: Wednesday, 17 June 2009 5:50 p.m.
To: python-list at python.org
Subject: RE: Good books in computer science?

In message <mailman.1612.1245126452.8015.python-list at python.org>, Phil 
Runciman wrote:

> FWIW I actually dislike this book!

Why?