Comment by teleforce
6 months ago
If you want to know the research culture and the environment of Bell Labs from author's first hand experiences, I'd highly recommended this book by Hamming [1].
[1] The Art of Doing Science and Engineering by Richard W. Hamming:
https://press.stripe.com/the-art-of-doing-science-and-engine...
My dad was at this talk in 1986 that PG shares on his blog:
https://paulgraham.com/hamming.html
Said it was amazing.
Hamming gave that talk many many times. There are recordings of it on YouTube. It is also the final chapter of his book "The Art of Doing Science and Engineering", which, IMHO, is worth reading in its entirety.
It's been out of stock for nearly a year. Interesting in a post talking about AT&T and Bell Labs to point out that Stripe struggles to maintain an inventory of niche printed books.
You're welcome to borrow my copy, feel free to ping me.
Has it? It seems to be available on Amazon at least.
Not in stock on Amazon. Just a bunch of third party sellers with varying ship dates months out. Nor Powells, other vendors, nor any used copies, nothing by ISBN search either.
Google says "in stock" in the search result. I do a search about once a month and click around. I've been doing it long enough that I can actually watch things get worse. No AI result yet, so there's still room to fall.
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