A Brief, Incomplete History of Programming Languages
A humorous tour through programming language history.
A Mathematical Theory of Communication
Shannon's paper that founded information theory.
AlphaGo
The story of DeepMind's AI defeating the world Go champion.
Complexity Explorer
SFI on complexity science.
Computing Machinery and Intelligence
Turing's foundational paper introducing the Turing Test.
Halt and Catch Fire (Opening Scene)
The opening of the show that captured the spirit of the PC revolution.
How Complex Systems Fail
18 observations about the nature of failure in complex systems.
No Silver Bullet
Brooks argues there is no single technique that will improve software productivity by an order of magnitude.
Out of the Tar Pit
A influential paper on managing complexity in software.
Pirates of Silicon Valley
The story of Apple and Microsoft's early rivalry.
Revolution OS
The story of Linux and the open source movement.
Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs
The legendary MIT textbook that shaped generations of programmers.
The Architecture of Open Source Applications
How the architects of major open source projects designed their software.
The Art of Unix Programming
The philosophy and culture of Unix programming.
The Code: Story of Linux
Documentary on the creation of Linux and open source.
The Hacker Ethic
The principles that guided the original hackers at MIT.
The Humble Programmer
Dijkstra's Turing Award lecture on the nature of programming.
The Internet's Own Boy
The story of Aaron Swartz, programming prodigy and information activist.
The Machine That Changed the World
A comprehensive documentary history of computing.
The Secret History of Silicon Valley
The military origins of Silicon Valley.
The Twelve-Factor App
A methodology for building modern, scalable web applications.
The Xerox Alto
The story of the computer that inspired the Macintosh.
Triumph of the Nerds
The rise of the personal computer industry.
What Every Programmer Should Know About Memory
A comprehensive guide to how memory works in modern computers.
Worse Is Better
Why simpler, 'worse' designs often win over complex, 'better' ones.