Ask HN: Fictional books related to startups? Any suggestions on fictional books about or related to startups? Fictional books related to the computer industry in general is also of interest. |
Ask HN: Fictional books related to startups? Any suggestions on fictional books about or related to startups? Fictional books related to the computer industry in general is also of interest. |
http://www.amazon.com/Cryptonomicon-Neal-Stephenson/dp/00605...
One engineer, Josh Rosen, who burned out fighting nanosecond-level timing bugs was seduced by the attraction of commune living and left to live in the country. His resignation note declared, I’m going to a commune in Vermont and will deal with no unit of time shorter than a season.
Gems like this one appear about once every two pages, give or take.
Although all the parts in it that I liked were already on the blog: http://fakesteve.blogspot.com
Tom is a software hacker himself and a very well known serial startup entrepreneur, with successes in comm and graphics apps (both Mac and PC) and then a huge IPO for his company ITXC during the internet bubble. His fictional murder mystery is based on his insider view of startups, both the both technical and financial sides.
Go to http://hackoff.com (note that the fictional domain which is the title of the book is also a real domain to promote the book). You can read the entire book or listen to Tom read the entire book free, or receive all the text episodes by RSS or email, or receive all the audio episodes by RSS or podcast. You can order the hardback book edition from Amazon, or buy a Kindle edition.
Nonfiction, but thought Fire in the Valley was worth mentioning. Pirates of the Silicon Valley is the movie based on it. Antitrust is also good.
The book explains Theory of Constraints(TOC) in a novel. TOC is basically similar to profiling software, but instead of software, you profile a business. Find the bottlenecks in the system and work on them. Improving other things has very low return, and usually just waste of time. Improving bottlenecks improves the throughput of the whole system.
Here are my other recommended business fiction books: http://atank.interlogy.com/blog/?p=15
To me, "Press Send" run circles around "Microserfs".
Good luck finding it in the US (It's a UK book for some reason).
There's a great little story in there about a developer's months-long struggle to draw a Window onscreen for the first time from scratch. I loved the descriptions of how they coded up everything from bare metal. As you'll see, Dave Cutler is one of those rare firebrands.
Another one, though this guy did NOT reply to my email, is about a publishing (not coding) startup, Burn Rate.
jPod (not sure, too long ago that I read it)
I have read Microserfs and JPod. Really enjoyed both of them. Also, the TV version of JPod is not that bad.