About the book
Inside Data General Corporation, a minicomputer maker of the 1970s, Tracy Kidder follows an engineering team racing under heavy pressure to design a next-generation computer. While most senior designers worked on a project called Fountainhead in North Carolina, Tom West led a smaller group at the Westborough, Massachusetts headquarters on Eagle, a backup to a larger effort aimed at the VAX from Digital Equipment Corporation. West took risks, adopting new technology and relying mostly on recent college graduates, and many of the designers gave almost every waking hour to the machine. It reached the market in 1980 as the Eclipse MV/8000. Published in 1981, the book won a Pulitzer Prize as well as the National Book Award for Nonfiction.
Naval Ravikant included it on his Sell the Truth list, and Mohnish Pabrai, who lists it on his bookshelf of sales and marketing books, called it required reading for anyone in product development or a startup.
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This book has 3 recommendations
Scott Johnson (Freelance Software Engineer)
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.
Naval Ravikant (CEO & Co-Founder/AngelList)
On Naval Ravikant’s Sell the Truth
Must-read for anyone in a product development or a startup environment.
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Scott Johnson, Naval Ravikant, Mohnish Pabrai