What do you think of then you think of the word hackers? It is one of those words that has morphed from a good to a bad connotation. This book is about the good guys; those who developed the original computers and software that made the home computer possible. This is not the immediate perception the buyer may have. If you just glance at the title and buy the book assuming it is about modern-day bad-guy hackers who use their genius for criminal purposes, you will be totally disappointed. This work is a 25-year anniversary edition, so the original writing was done by 1985.



A hacker is by definition in this book someone who is passionate almost beyond physical and mental limits about something, in this case machines (specifically computers). One can feel the nascent stages of the eerie marriage of carbon-based intelligence and silicone-based intelligence that is now seen as a likely, even certain for some, probability.



There are two requisites to enjoy this work as I did:



1.It will help immensely if you are a hacker, or at least a programmer, or perhaps even an experienced software user. Many of the acronyms are explained, but many are not (HTML, BASIC for example). Actually, to explain Hyper Text Markup Language or Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code and give examples is not in the province of this work. But it really does help to have done some HTML or other programming. (I have 25 years of programming experience, mostly in x-base.)



2.You will enjoy it much more if you were around for the personal computer revolution as I was. My first programming was on an Apple IIe. I remember Woz, Jobs, Gates and others of the 80's. That helps a lot in making the book meaningful and enjoyable.



If you meet those requirements, you will enjoy this book, though it will not be one you just can't put down. At almost 500 pages, you have to take it in small chunks.



If you know next to nothing about computers, but are a hacker at heart, you will probably like this book too. Just go on-line and look up things like CPU's, registers, accumulators, BASIC and other terms that may not be familiar.



A great companion to this book would be: Cyber War, by Richard A Clarke. This work discusses the modern-day bad-guy hackers who have hacked into such things as major US power grids and even weapon systems. It is a very scary warning about the power of the computer and hackers to win a war with cyber weapons.