Go To: The Story of the Math Majors, Bridge Players, Engineers, Chess Wizards, Maverick Scientists, and Ico

by Steve Lohr

Exploring the strange and hazy days before nerds ruled the earth, tech writer Steve Lohr's Go To is a great introduction to the softer side of the information age. Sure, he covers the Microsoft and Apple stories, but he also digs deeply to learn how Fortran and Cobol were developed and ventures into the open-source world. Lohr is adept at personalizing the process of software development, which serves to make some of the business and technical decisions more comprehensible to the lay reader.

IBM conducted yearly employee reviews called the "Performance Improvement Program," or Pip, for short. The Pip, like most such programs today, followed a rigid formula, with numbers and rankings. [John] Backus decided the Pip system was ill-suited for measuring the performance of his programmers, so his approach was to mostly ignore it. One afternoon, for example, he called Lois Haibt over for a chat. He talked about her work, said she had been doing an excellent job and then pushed a small piece of paper across the desk saying, "This is your new salary," a pleasing raise, as Haibt recalled. As she got up to leave, Backus mentioned in passing, "In case anyone should ask, this was your Pip."

Since he starts early in the history of the field, Lohr gets to share some of the oddities of the days before programming was professionalized. Developers were kids, musicians, game experts, and practically anyone who showed an interest. Many readers will be surprised and delighted to read of the strong recruitment of women and their many contributions to software development--an aspect of geek history that has long been neglected. Go To should break down a few preconceptions while building up a new respect for the coders who guided us into the 21st century. --Rob Lightner

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Science, Programming, Technology, Computers, Computer Science

268 pages, Kindle Edition

First published September 30, 2001

Reviews

[Nick Black · Rating 2 out of 5]

apparently cobol is, as expected and understood, totally crappy unless being discussed in the context of grace hopper, because anything associated with history's most overrated-for-sociological-purposes programmer couldn't be bad. this book read like the first "research paper" i ever had to write, back in 8th grade on zelda fitzgerald of all things, when i sat there with a bunch of quotes on index cards and tried to figure out how to weave them into crap prose.

[Brittany · Rating 4 out of 5]

The author presents a history of software in an interesting way. Mini-biographies of the pioneers of the industry, tools, and languages make the story of these inventors and how they came about their discoveries in a lively and entertaining way.

[Otis Chandler · Rating 3 out of 5]

A quick read, but somewhat inspirational

[Ess Atoms]

Informative narrative and explanations. A nice gateway for further research.

[Jacob R · Rating 2 out of 5]

Serves as a short summary of the history of programming.

[Hyde · Rating 4 out of 5]

3 1/2

[Nicholas Moryl · Rating 3 out of 5]

Readable history of programming languages until ~2000; ends at Java and the rise of open source movements in the late 90s. Doesn't get too mired in details but still gives enough context to understand how things evolved the way they did and the general forces driving them. Took me a long time to finish this book because, while interesting, it wasn't exactly gripping. But if you're naturally curious about the stuff it'll fill in a few gaps.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Excited to see Ian Foster ("a native of New Zealand") mentioned on the last page