Both my kids are into computers, and my husband is as well. One of the kids is majoring in Computer Science, so I was interested in seeing what women have done in the field when it was new.
This book follows 6 of the first programmers of the ENIAC machine. It lists many of the other people involved with the early ideas and the project as well. Not being familiar with a lot of the terminology, I was a little lost here and there. Aside from that, it was a good explanation of what the women experienced.
The page count is a smidge misleading. The product page lists the book at 274 pages. The main "meat" of the book ends at page 220, followed by an epilogue, photos on page 232, a postscript starting on page 233, and the end notes begin on page 244. (All page numbers are referring to the Kindle version.)
I learned a lot in this book. It was a fairly neutral narrative until I got to the epilogue. That part of the book was the author's journey of researching and learning about the subject. She also tends to lean toward the subject of gender inequality in this section. I'm not saying it's not a fair point, I'm just pointing out it becomes more prevalent all of a sudden.
I think if you like computer science, and you're interested in the history of the field, you might like this book. It's not going to appeal to everyone, especially if you have no idea what goes on with mathematics and the basic concepts of programming. I'll give it a Good Book! review, because I enjoyed it, but I think it would've lost me if it was much longer.
No comments:
Post a Comment