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 A well-written account of computer pioneers - just make sure you're interested in this stuff February 27, 2008
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
As the description mentions, Steven Levy's "Hackers" is not about computer criminals, but refers to the more traditional definition of "someone who delights in having an intimate understanding of the internal workings of a computer and computer network." I purchased this book because I was intrigued with Sierra On-Line, and was interested in learning more about some of the founding software companies and people who became rich from the computer boom of the early 80s. Having just finished Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet about the creation of the Internet, and being bored out of my mind with it, I was hoping "Hackers" would be a little more exciting. Unfortunately, the first half of the book mirrors "Wizards" in a lot of ways and discusses much of the same content. What's more, before purchasing, I had no idea this book was published in 1984 and that it would naturally only discuss computers up to the early 80s.
"Hackers" is divided into three parts:
1. True Hackers - 1946 - mid 70s. This section focuses on the early computer pioneers at MIT, such as the Tech Model Railroad Club, the Lincoln Laboratory, and experimenting with large mainframes such as the PDP-1 and TX-0. It describes in detail how they would spend hours punching in code for these computers to come up with the simplest hacks. I struggled to get through this section. It was so incredibly detailed and filled with minutiae that it took me two months and several breaks to get through the 200+ pages. Some of it was interesting, but there was just so much information I didn't need to know or care about.
2. Hardware Hackers - Mid 70s - 1980. All about the Homebrew Computer Club and the development of early personal computers, focusing on the Altair 8800, TRS-80, development of BASIC, and Stephen Wozniak's creation of the Apple and Apple II Personal Computers. This section was definitely more lively than the first, but there is still nothing that couldn't have been summed up in a 4 or 5 page magazine article or a visit to Wikipedia.
3. Game Hackers - Late 70s - 1982. This section is largely about the development of the game company Sierra On-Line, although the first few chapters spend a lot of time discussing arly game development. This section was the most interesting in the book, especially to gain some insight into the culture that existed in the gamin industry back in its development, but not as exciting as I thought it was going to be. Since the book was published in 1984, there is no mention of the incredibly popular King's Quest series that launched Sierra to the top of the industry.
The main underlying theme of this book is the "hacker ethic," characterized by open access to computers (no passwords), mistrust of authority, computers are beneficial to changing people's lives, and all information should be free. It is very heavily discussed throughout the book and it's implications on the industry and the people in it. If this were a thesis paper about the hacker ethic I would have given Mr. Levy an A+ for staying so on focus. Unfortunately, it's not a thesis paper. If you are purchasing this book for entertainment purposes, make sure you are REALLY interested in early hacker culture. I thought I was but the book was just too dry for me. Not to mention it was hard to keep up with the hundreds of people introduced in the book. On the plus side, it is exceptionally well-researched and hardly seems dated at all. Until I got to the last few chapters, I had no idea the book was over twenty years old.
 The positive side of hacking January 7, 2008
It's so relieving to see Levy's capture of the positive side of the qualification to be able to hack. I believe the progress in the software and hardware development has been greatly advanced be the qualifications theses people have shown.
When it later comes to the aspect of what this qualification has been used for, the results are more dubious. It is sad, however, that todays meaning of the term hacker seems to cover only the negative side of the history.
Couldn't put it down November 25, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Great read on the early days of computer hackers, only wish it was updated (the book ends in the 80's but does include a small update/list of where the main players are in later years (the 90's))
Very well written, it was easy to follow and understand. From the early days at MIT to the later years with Sierra On-Line, this tells of the early hackers and thier acheivements. There are some especially great stories behind the scenes in the later parts of the book.
An amazing insight into the mind of a computer enthusiast June 22, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Steven Levy has written a masterpiece, and I will be forever grateful to him for it. Although when I read it (circa year 2001) computers were much more mainstream than the period this book covers (1960s-80s), the book still broke new ground for me. It was before the blogging era, and especially before all the aspiring hackers of the world "united" via a network of blogs, forums, feeds, "planets" (feed collections on specific topics) and link accumulators like Reddit and Digg. In other words, it was much more difficult for me to find people with interests similar to mine.
Or maybe I didn't look hard enough. This is not the point, anyway. The point is that this book took me "out of the closet" as a hacker, proud of my hobby, instead of wondering whether I'm some kind of an autistic freak. Reading it, I understood two things of utmost importance:
1. There were, and there are, many people with my interests and peculiarities. And these are the people that made the computer revolution happen.
2. Somehow, Steven Levy managed to explain in words the reason people find computers and programming so fascinating. In some sense it was a revelation. I kept saying to myself "yes, exactly!" and "ahh, now I understand" very frequently while reading the book.
Here are a couple of great quotes from the book regarding (2):
" What kept him going was his fascination with the machine, how it let you build complicated systems completely under your control."
I heard people referring to this as instant gratification. Engineering is fun, solving problems is fun, and building solutions is fun - this probably has strong roots in the ancestral humans, shaped by evolution to be smarter than other animals. As opposed to other, more "physical" disciplines of engineering, like electrical, mechanical or structural engineering, programming allows you to actually create real and useful things with a computer as your only tool. An electrical engineer may wait for a long time until his board will be produced, and only then he can "play with it". For a computer programmer, things are much simpler. It is very easy and quick to build systems and use them.
" [...] computers were an infinitely flexible artistic medium, one in which you could express yourself by creating your own little universe."
"Code is art" is a very popular notion these days, perhaps coined by Knuth in his "The Art of Computer Programming" books. People do art for fun - they draw, play and compose music, write and design pretty gardens. In this sense, programming is not much different - it is an act of creation and self-expression. It is fun.
As I said, this book is a treasure chest of insightful quotes like the ones above. Levy interviewed most of the who-and-whos in the world of computing from the 1960s in the MIT labs and through the 1980s in the Californian game development companies. In addition to being explanatory of the "hacker nature", the book is also a great historical reference for the early years of computing. How lucky we are these days to have the opportunity to hack so easily. Just a few decades ago, people interested in computers had to use clanky, slow, terminals or worse, batch-processing machines. There are so much free open-source development tools one really doesn't need to spend money on anything further than the hardware - and PCs are cheap and powerful.
I can't recommend this book enough to anyone interested in computing, and programming in particular. As an aid to discovering your internal motivations, you own yourself to read it.
 Oh, what might have been... June 14, 2007
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
SL does a fine job of charting the early history of hacking at MIT and Stanford and beyond. As a member of the 3rd-generation-of-hackers generation (though, regretfully, not a hacker myself), I remember well the first personal computers and computer game systems, and the passion of friends and classmates of mine who were among the first to own and cut their programming teeth on them. It's amazing to think how far computers have come in my lifetime, a true technological revolution. SL's book reminds us not only how very near the beginnings of personal computing history we are, but how very far we've drifted from the intellectual and social ideals that marked those beginnings. What a shame that the Hacker utopias Levy describes are no more, and that computers and computing, today, are so enchained to commerce (granted that there are of course many extraordinary applications of computer technology, today, and many more to expect in the future, as well). I can only imagine how disappointed the Greenblatts, Nelsons, Felsensteins, etc., of yesteryear must be. The passing of the Hacker age -- if, indeed, it has passed -- is no less than the passing of a culture, as Richard ("last of the Hackers") Stallman laments. Reading Hackers, especially the opening chapters about the MIT AI-lab hacking community, I found myself wishing that I, too, had been 'present at the creation' and blessed with enormous hacking talent. SL's book is a long trip down many others' very pleasant -- in equal parts exciting and frustrating -- memory lane. As later chapters explore the computer gaming scene, and subsequent generations of hackerism, the subject-matter of Hackers becomes less compelling, and the writing a bit tiresome. I could, for instance, have done without SL's incessant harping on the social akwardnesses and missed sexual gambits of the gamers he profiles, material that reads sophomorically in the extreme. This aside, Hackers is an entertaining and informative piece of sociological journalism. FYI, "Artificial Life", by the same author, is a far better written first-rate piece of science journalism. Hackers is a could-read; Artificial Life is a should-read.
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