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A review by tikitechie
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold
4.0
This book was a good low-level explanation of how computers function, starting with the absolute basic electrical level right on up to macro-level things like user interfaces and codecs. Overall, it was very informative but not altogether engaging— and I’m a developer up to my eyes in computers all day every day!
Some of the chapters are really showing their age, especially given the rapid increase in tech over the last 10-15 years. This book probably hasn’t been updated since before 2000, and hardly even mentions anything beyond a 300-baud modem.
I appreciated that the author takes the time to explain all the basic concepts of each thing mentioned, whether explaining how electricity is measured, to “modem” being modulator/demodulator, to how to pronounce “JPEG.” There are no assumptions made here.
On the other hand, some chapters are extremely dry and hard to follow, though probably not the authors fault. The middle of the book, discussing mid-tier processor functions, I must have put the book down every other page. It’s a slog, but the end of the book was very interesting for a person of my age. I was too young to have a PC around during the initial years of the internet, so those early 90s developments (that ended up guiding current tech) were interesting to hear about.
Still, I feel like the first part of the book is done in painstaking detail, and the last third of the book glosses over a lot of things at a high level. I’m not sure if the author is still writing, but this one is badly in need of a refresh. (Maybe that in itself is a commentary on how tech has changed in the years since this book was first published! Books are no longer a fire and forget work. Consumers expect to download them electronically and get updates. Odd!)
Some of the chapters are really showing their age, especially given the rapid increase in tech over the last 10-15 years. This book probably hasn’t been updated since before 2000, and hardly even mentions anything beyond a 300-baud modem.
I appreciated that the author takes the time to explain all the basic concepts of each thing mentioned, whether explaining how electricity is measured, to “modem” being modulator/demodulator, to how to pronounce “JPEG.” There are no assumptions made here.
On the other hand, some chapters are extremely dry and hard to follow, though probably not the authors fault. The middle of the book, discussing mid-tier processor functions, I must have put the book down every other page. It’s a slog, but the end of the book was very interesting for a person of my age. I was too young to have a PC around during the initial years of the internet, so those early 90s developments (that ended up guiding current tech) were interesting to hear about.
Still, I feel like the first part of the book is done in painstaking detail, and the last third of the book glosses over a lot of things at a high level. I’m not sure if the author is still writing, but this one is badly in need of a refresh. (Maybe that in itself is a commentary on how tech has changed in the years since this book was first published! Books are no longer a fire and forget work. Consumers expect to download them electronically and get updates. Odd!)