Book Review: Hackers by Steven Levy

Hackers covers hacker history from the late fifties to the early eighties. Levy captures the passion of these young men for the computer. He distills for the layman the adventure of programming as few have. Particularly in parts 1 and 2 of his book.

Famous hackers from history such as Alan Kotok, Peter Samson, Steve "Slug" Russel of Space War fame, Bill Gosper, Richard Greenblat, Lee Felsenstein, Stephen Wozniak and Steve Jobs of Apple, Richard Stallman, Richard "Lord British" Garriott and John Harris fill the pages with their various adventures, wins and losses.

This book is however slightly marred by Levy's lack of computer knowledge coupled with apparently shoddy research (several key program names, such as TICO for TECO, are misspelled). This is not serious, but his tendency to loose track of the subject matter, spending too much time writing about various Computer Science types like Minsky and McCarthy or suits such as Bill Gates, Adam Osborne and Ken Williams, in some cases necessary to add context, but other times, I suspect, because these men (All fascinating in their own right, and many computer programmers at some time or another) and their motives are more easily grasped by Levy and his readers alike, detracts, ever so slightly, from an otherwise excellent book.

Despite some very minor flaws, this is a wonderful book on hacking and hackers, be they the TMRC TX-0 Aficionados back in the late fifties and early sixties, the wirehead hardware junkies of the seventies , or the home-computer game hackers of the eighties. I would strongly recommend this title to computer wonks and laymen alike.