Back in the 80s I worked for a computer manufacturer in the Valley designing chips and doing all the other fun stuff involved with creating and bringing up a new machine. When people asked me what I did for a living I told them to read "The Soul of a New Machine" - that was my job. Kidder really captured exactly what it was like to create those beasts, with all the ups and downs of computer engineering in that era. Different coast, different (much bigger) computer, but the process was exactly the same. Perfect historical snapshot.