I wrote a novel about my work developing the Xerox Star
"As someone who reads just about any computing history non-fiction he can get his hands on, I was skeptical about reading a fictional book about computing history. I quickly realized the huge advantage of writing historical fiction as Robert Purvy's new book "This New Internet Thing" both teaches
I wrote a novel about my work developing the Xerox Star launched on August 4, 2021 with 35 votes, #1,112 of 2,953 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches. The site was still online in September 2026, 5 years on.
In plain words
Albert Cory's novel draws from his professional experience developing the Xerox Star, an influential computer system from the 1980s. The book combines memoir with fiction, offering an insider's perspective on pioneering work in graphical user interfaces and networked computing. It's aimed at readers interested in tech history, computing evolution, and workplace narratives. The novel transforms technical development into personal storytelling.
written from the facts on this page · September 2026
From the sources
"As someone who reads just about any computing history non-fiction he can get his hands on, I was skeptical about reading a fictional book about computing history. I quickly realized the huge advantage of writing historical fiction as Robert Purvy's new book "This New Internet Thing" both teaches history and puts the reader in the middle of history, all without privacy concerns or betraying any confidences. To the connoisseur of computer history, especially the early years of the commercial Internet, I say you must read this book. To anyone working in the computing industry today, if you want to know how to deal with a constantly changing landscape and avoid repeating past mistakes, you…from albertcory.io
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A storybook designed to teach kids about how computers work2024 · lostlanguageofthemachines.com · ▲132I’ve been working on a unique storybook designed to teach kids about how computers work, and I would love to get your feedback. Set 500 years in the future, the story follows two kids – one a robot, the other a human – as they explore the workings of what to them is ancient technology: our present-day computers. I’ve aimed to keep each story short and engaging, sprinkling in humor and illustrations to captivate young readers. As an open-source project, you’re also welcome to check out the source here: https://github.com/yong/lostlanguageofthemachines
- IMI'm writing a free book called Computer Networks from Scratch2022 · networksfromscratch.com · ▲792
- IWI wrote a technical history book on LispFeb 2026 · berksoft.ca · ▲252
The book page links to a blog post that explains how I got about it (and has a link to sample content), but the TL&DR is that I could not find a lot of books that were on "our" history _and_ were larded with technical details. So I set about writing one, and some five years later I'm happy to share the result. I think it's one of the few "computer history" books that has tons of code, but correct me if I'm wrong (I wrote this both to tell a story and to learn :-)). My favorite languages are Smalltalk and Lisp, but as an Emacs user, I've been using the latter for much longer and for my…
What the Dormouse Said2015 · amazon.com · ▲55How the Sixties Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer
- LFLooking for Feedback on My “Computer Science Fiction” Novel Blue Screen2023 · ▲60
This has been my Covid burnout project and I would love any thoughts or input, especially about the Bash code. I just am finishing the first chapter of the audiobook and would love any thoughts, positive or negative. The full pdf here: https://KyleBenzle.com/BlueScreen.pdf Free first chapter of the audiobook: https://soundcloud.com/landgrant/blue-screen-chapter-1 Giving away the Amazon ebook: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B084GHLYSX Blurb: Peter Gustafson wants to save the world. In the year 2984, Peter is an average kid with a secret; he’s…
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Source: Show HN post ↗
Launched alongside, August 2021
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Hey all My name is Sindre, and I am the CTO of Scrimba (YC S20). For the last 7 years, I have written all my web apps in a full-stack programming language called Imba. It compiles to JavaScript and its main goal is to make web developers more productive. I just launched a major overhaul of Imba, so I wanted to share it here on HN, in case anyone are interested in learning more about it. It is very opinionated, so some of you might not like it, but I would love to hear anyones feedback regardless. Constructive criticism appreciated! The backstory: Imba initially started in 2012 as an effort…
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Hello HN, Over the last year we've been building ente[1], a privacy-friendly, easy-to-use alternative to Google Photos. We've so far built Android[2][3], iOS[4], web[5] apps that encrypt your files and back them up in the background. You can access these across your devices, and share them with other ente users, end-to-end encrypted. You can also use our electron app[6] to maintain a local copy of your backed up files. We've built a fault-tolerant data replication layer that replicates your data to two different storage providers in the EU. We will be providing additional replicas as an…
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