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.
Charles Petzold wrote the classic Programming Windows®, which is currently in its fifth edition and one of the best-known and widely used programming books of all time. He was honored in 1994 with the Windows Pioneer Award, presented by Microsoft® founder Bill Gates and Windows Magazine. He has been programming with Windows since first obtaining a beta Windows 1.0 SDK in the spring of 1985, and he wrote the very first magazine article on Windows programming in 1986. Charles is an MVP for Client Application Development and the author of several other books including Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software.
This is one of the most thorough and well-written books I've read. I wish it was used as a text book or at least supplemental reading when I took my hardware and software class in college.
Charles Petzold describes the content in a way that makes it fun to read and easy to understand. I'm not *that* into hardware, so I can understand where someone might say it goes a little too in-depth into the circuitry. What the book does do well is teach you the concepts necessary to build a computer from the ground up. While he does spend quite a bit discussing the 8086 architecture, I think it is extremely effective while reading it when you think, "Is that it?"
I have recommended this book to everyone I know, even people who aren't engineers but might want to better understand who computers really work.
12/27/2010
(4 of 4 customers found this review helpful)
4.0
Great idea, needs update
By nelsonhf
from Charlottesville, VA
About Me Developer
Pros
Helpful examples
Intriguing
Well-written
Cons
Outdated
Too technical sometimes
Best Uses
Intermediate
Student
Comments about Microsoft Press CODE:
This is a great book to help a non-technical person understand what makes a computer tick. It could easily be used as basis for a Computer 101 course for Engineers. It may get a bit too technical at times, delving deep into circuits and even showing how to build a computer from scratch (and I mean relays and switches!), which may scare some. The bad part is that it is about 20 years old and it shows (talking about floppies, 640x480 CRT, megabytes of memory and disk, etc as in use in "modern computers"). A quick polish would take away the mothball smell. I would heavily recommend the first 9 chapters, then it gets a bit too technical for most non-technical inclined. Chapters 20 ("ASCII and a Cast of Characters", about character sets), 23 ("Fixed Point, Floating Point", about number representation), and 24 ("Languages High and Low", about computer languages) will probably answer some questions you didn't even know to ask...
11/2/2010
(2 of 2 customers found this review helpful)
4.0
Great book, so-so .mobi conversion
By Render9
from Johannesburg, South Africa
Pros
Concise
Easy to understand
Helpful examples
Well-written
Cons
Table formatting broken
Best Uses
Comments about Microsoft Press CODE:
Even though I studied computers in high school and have a degree in electrical engineering, I wish this was the first book that I'd read on how computers work.
I'm currently on chapter 7 and my only complaint so far is that all tables have been reduced to a single column when it comes to the .MOBI ebook format as viewed on my Kindle 3.
