It is not at all surprising that “The Soul of a New Machine” resonates with people in Hacker News. And it is a tremendous book. But for me, his book about Paul Farmer, “Mountains Beyond Mountains”, was even more meaningful. Tracy met Paul by happenstance and in a short encounter recognized the stubborn greatness that was Paul. He was an amazing character who sadly is no longer with us, but captured in a book worthy of his life. Read the book and contribute to Paul’s life work “Partners in Health”.
House was also a wonderful read. In many ways I enjoyed it more than SoaNM due to the parallels with software development but in a completely different domain. Building a house is remarkably similar to building an application.
His whole catalogue is fantastic really. Definitely a favourite author of mine.
Agreed. The Soul of a New Machine is my personal favorite but I think Mountains Beyond Mountains as well as Strength in What Remains are the more powerful and interesting books.
Kind of amazing that that book was written in 2003. Farmer would've only been about 42 around then and he'd already done so much that Kidder wrote this book about him.