Code
1999 • 400 pages
Ratings22
Average rating4.3
15
Ratings22
Average rating4.3
What do flashlights, the British invasion, black cats, and seesaws have to do with computers? In CODE, they show us the ingenious ways we manipulate language and invent new means of communicating with each other. And through CODE, we see how this ingenuity and our very human compulsion to communicate have driven the technological innovations of the past two centuries. Using everyday objects and familiar language systems such as Braille and Morse code, author Charles Petzold weaves an illuminating narrative for anyone who’s ever wondered about the secret inner life of computers and other smart machines. It’s a cleverly illustrated and eminently comprehensible story—and along the way, you’ll discover you’ve gained a real context for understanding today’s world of PCs, digital media, and the Internet. No matter what your level of technical savvy, CODE will charm you—and perhaps even awaken the technophile within.
Reviews with the most likes.
This is a wonderful book. It claims it wants the reader to understand computers the way computer engineers do. And, if you read carefully, follow the diagrams and think through the explanations,
you will start to. He shows how the main components can be built out of the clever use of a few ordinary bits of technology, all over a hundred years old. I started programming computers about 40 years ago and have a Ph.D in computer science, so I mostly already knew everything in here. But I had the most fun I have had in years reading the first half or so. One of my first programming classes in college involved learning exactly this material. Using little bits of code to simulate relays, switches and such, we built logic gates, then used that code to build 1/2 adders, adders and other components. It was the same sequence of ideas and techniques presented here. We wrote the code in assembler, I think for the PDP-11, or maybe it was in the Mix language used in the Knuth books. This class was my favorite of all my programming classes and reading this book took me back there.
Now I am inspired to do it again, using the circuits described in this book to build a simulation for the web.
So now you think this book is for highly trained engineers and it absolutely isn't. The background you need is you have to understand that switches go on and off, and if you hook a light bulb to a battery, it will light up. The author carefully and fully explains the rest. After getting through this you will know why computers use binary arithmetic, how Braille and Morse code are related, what mathematical logic is. Every day you use that amazing phone or desktop computer to make and play video and music, talk to people anywhere in the world, find out anything you want to know. Read this book and you will know it's not magic, it's the very clever use of a few very simple tools.
This book would be great for a high school student who is interested in science, math or technology and for anybody who wants to know how computers really work, not just what app does what. This was easily my favorite book I read this year.
An excellent, approachable work suited for anyone interested in computers, demanding no need for technical background. As an individual with large amounts of experience in several of the topics presented within, I still found this work enjoyable and it filled in some gaps in the entire stack of the computer. While the later chapters show the age of the text, the combined historical summary of events and technical deep dive into operation was highly enjoyable.
