Soul of a New Machine is one of the best books chronicling product development. (Showstopper about Windows NT is another good one.)

There were a lot of parallel threads in the early 80s that didn't really intersect a lot. You had the PC/BBS world, the ARPANET/Internet, and the minicomputer & mainframe worlds.

I knew a lot of the people in Soul of a New Machine and actually dotted-lined into Tom West for a while. (Later on when Data General was coming out with big Unix servers.)

I don't think I quite made it to the end of HaCF as it's not available (legally) on non-premium subscriptions. I'll have to hunt it down.

I will check Showstopper, thank you for recommendation. It was definitely a fruitful time, a lot of meaningful job was done. I envy you that you could work with those folks.

It was a different time. In general, things happened more slowly. Things were a lot less interconnected and a lot less transparent from the outside. Information was really hard to get. It was a good time. It was also a time that I would probably find incredibly frustrating to get anything done in if I were to suddenly be transported back.