Code Nation explores the rise of software development as a social, cultural, and technical phenomenon in American history. The movement germinated in government and university labs during the 1950s, gained momentum through corporate and counterculture experiments in the 1960s and 1970s, and became a broad-based computer literacy movement in the 1980s. As personal computing came to the fore, learning to program was transformed by a groundswell of popular enthusiasm, exciting new platforms, and an array of commercial practices that have been further amplified by distributed computing and the Internet. The resulting society can be depicted as a "Code Nation" — a globally-connected world that is saturated with computer technology and enchanted by software and its creation.

Code Nation is a new history of personal computing that emphasizes the technical and business challenges that software developers faced when building applications for CP/M, MS-DOS, UNIX, Microsoft Windows, the Apple Macintosh, and other emerging platforms. It is a popular history of computing that explores the experiences of novice computer users, tinkerers, hackers, and power users, as well as the ideals and aspirations of leading computer scientists, engineers, educators, and entrepreneurs. Computer book and magazine publishers also played important, if overlooked, roles in the diffusion of new technical skills, and this book highlights their creative work and influence.

Code Nation offers a “behind-the-scenes” look at application and operating-system programming practices, the diversity of historic computer languages, the rise of user communities, early attempts to market PC software, and the origins of “enterprise” computing systems. Code samples and over 80 historic photographs support the text. The book concludes with an assessment of contemporary efforts to teach computational thinking to young people.

Michael J. Halvorson, Pacific Lutheran University
Michael Halvorson teaches business and economic history courses in the Department of History at Pacific Lutheran University, as well as classes on innovation and the history of technology. Professor Halvorson graduated from Pacific Lutheran University in 1985 and was employed for nine years at Microsoft, where he worked as an editor, writer, and localization manager. Since 1989, he has written 40 books about computer software, history, and technology. His most recent book about Windows programming and smart phone development is Microsoft Visual Basic 2013 Step by Step (Microsoft Press).

Halvorson's historical books include a recent title on Renaissance Europe entitled The Renaissance: All That Matters. The book was published by Hodder and Stoughton in the UK in 2014. An edition for North American audiences was published in 2015 in the McGraw-Hill series “Teach Yourself: History & Politics”.

Acknowledgments
How important is programming?
Four computing mythologies
FORTRAN, Logo, and the Tower of Babel
Advocating computer literacy
Four million BASIC programmers
Power users, tinkerers, and gurus
Hackers and cyberpunks
Computer magazines and historical research
Developing for MS-DOS: authors and entrepreneurs
C programming nation: from Tiny C to Microsoft Windows
"Evangelism is sales done right": PCs and commercial programming culture
Afterword: programming in the Internet age
Index