The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy
Kidder
Wonderful Timeless Story About Computers And The People Who Make Them.
The computer revolution brought with it new methods of getting work
done--just look at todays 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 harder and faster on complex and difficult
projects, exploiting the youngsters ignorance of normal scheduling
processes while engendering a new kind of work ethic. These days, we
are used to the total commitment philosophy of managing technical
creation, but Kidder was surprised and even a little alarmed at the
obsessions and compulsions he found. From in-house political struggles
to workers being permitted to tease management to marathon 24-hour
work sessions, The Soul of a New Machine explores concepts that

already seem familiar, even old-hat, less than 20 years later. Kidder
plainly admires his subjects; while he admits to hopeless confusion about
their work, he finds their dedication heroic. The reader wonders, though,
what will become of it all, now and in the future. --Rob Lightner
Personal Review: The Soul of a New Machine by Tracy Kidder
This is a history of what it takes to design and build a new computer. Tracy
Kidder spent eight months in a basement in Westborough, Massachusetts
watching the process and lived to tell us about it, and he tells it very well.
The minicomputer company Data General had gotten behind the curve in
the late 1970s, and was in danger of being flattened by Digital Equipment
Corporation's VAX series. Data General assembled an "official" team to
design their answer to VAX, and an "insurance" team that was to devise a
more modest answer, to be used only if the main team failed. The main
team did fail, and this book is the story of the insurance team.
The thing that most comes out in the story is the constant struggle against
obstacles: the technical challenges themselves, an impossible schedule,
lack of resources, and (benign?) neglect from the company's top
management. Kidder likens it to a "frontiersman's travails", with "wolves,
hostile Indians, and busted wagon wheels" replaced by their modern-day
computer engineering equivalents. One thing the team did not lack was
confidence. The leaders had deliberately hired the smartest new graduates
("kids") they could find, inspired by the example of legendary computer
designer Seymour Cray. In addition to being cheaper to hire, kids do not
know what is impossible, and in fact none of the kids seemed to be
daunted by their task. It was challenging, yes; wearying, yes; impossible,
no. The team leaders were much less confident: "Maybe you couldn't build
a major CPU with kids. It was awfully risky. It was a compelling idea." But
they kept their doubts to themselves, and the kids were left alone in their
basement.
The book is not primarily a technical book, but a management book and a
human story, and has held up well in the thirty years since its publication.
Most of the technology described in the book, although brand-new at the
time, has become obsolete since then. Engineering management and the
way leading-edge projects are tackled has not changed much over the
past thirty years, and because the book focuses on those aspects, it has
aged well.
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