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Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software 1st Edition

by Charles Petzold (Author)
4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 2,739 ratings
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Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software
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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.

Previous page
  1. ISBN-10
    9780735611313
  2. ISBN-13
    978-0735611313
  3. Edition
    1st
  4. Publisher
    Microsoft Press
  5. Publication date
    October 11, 2000
  6. Part of series
    Developer Best Practices
  7. Language
    English
  8. Dimensions
    6 x 1 x 8.9 inches
  9. Print length
    400 pages
  10. See all details
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Charles Petzold has been writing about Windows programming for 25 years. A Windows Pioneer Award winner, Petzold is author of the classic Programming Windows, the widely acclaimed Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, Programming Windows Phone 7, and more than a dozen other books.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 0735611319
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Microsoft Press; 1st edition (October 11, 2000)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Paperback ‏ : ‎ 400 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 9780735611313
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0735611313
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.19 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6 x 1 x 8.9 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 2,739 ratings

About the author

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Charles Petzold

Charles Petzold

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Charles Petzold has been writing about Windows programming for 25 years. A Windows Pioneer Award winner, Petzold is author of the classic Programming Windows, the widely acclaimed Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, Programming Windows Phone 7, and more than a dozen other books.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
4.6 out of 5
2,739 global ratings
A classic
5 Stars
A classic
I have just finished this very well written and informative book. Much has been said about it so I won't repeat the good points. One thing however is that if you are somewhat uninitiated reader(which is basically the main target audience of this book) you need to have patience and grit to finish it. I understand the subject is not very easy , and even though material is explained well, expect to get stuck at several points. Some knowledge of math(mainly basic probability) will help and repeat reading of problematic parts will likely clear all doubts that you might have.I am impressed by the practicality and scope of this book, so I ordered second, newer edition.
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Top reviews from the United States

George K
5.0 out of 5 stars A classic
Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2023
Verified Purchase
I have just finished this very well written and informative book. Much has been said about it so I won't repeat the good points. One thing however is that if you are somewhat uninitiated reader(which is basically the main target audience of this book) you need to have patience and grit to finish it. I understand the subject is not very easy , and even though material is explained well, expect to get stuck at several points. Some knowledge of math(mainly basic probability) will help and repeat reading of problematic parts will likely clear all doubts that you might have.
I am impressed by the practicality and scope of this book, so I ordered second, newer edition.
Customer image
George K
5.0 out of 5 stars A classic
Reviewed in the United States on October 16, 2023
I have just finished this very well written and informative book. Much has been said about it so I won't repeat the good points. One thing however is that if you are somewhat uninitiated reader(which is basically the main target audience of this book) you need to have patience and grit to finish it. I understand the subject is not very easy , and even though material is explained well, expect to get stuck at several points. Some knowledge of math(mainly basic probability) will help and repeat reading of problematic parts will likely clear all doubts that you might have.
I am impressed by the practicality and scope of this book, so I ordered second, newer edition.
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James B. Delong
5.0 out of 5 stars Best Book I've Read This Year
Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 1999
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I think that this is the best book that I have read all year. In some sense this is the book that I have been looking for for twenty-five years--the book that will enable me to understand how a computer does what it does. And--given the centrality of computers in our age--it has been a long wait. But now it is over. Charles Petzold (1999), Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software does a much better job than anything else I have ever seen in explaining computers--what they really are, and how they really work.
Have you ever wondered just how your computers really work? I mean, really, really work. Not as in "an electrical signal from memory tells the processor the number to be added," but what the electrical signal is, and how it accomplishes the magic of switching on the circuits that add while switching off the other circuits that would do other things with the number. I have. I have wondered this a lot over the past decades.
Yet somehow over the past several decades my hunger for an explanation has never been properly met. I have listened to people explain how two switches wired in series are an "AND"--only if both switches are closed will the lightbulb light. I have listened to people explain how IP is a packet-based communications protocol and TCP is a connection-based protocol yet the connection-based protocal can ride on top of the packet-based protocol. Somehow these explanations did not satisfy. One seemed like answering "how does a car work?" by telling how in the presence of oxygen carbon-hydrogen bonds are broken and carbon dioxide and water are created. The other seemed like anwering "how does a car work" by telling how if you step on the accelerator the car moves forward.
Charles Petzold is different. He has hit the sweet spot exactly. Enough detail to satisfy anyone. Yet the detail is quickly built up as he ascends to higher and higher levels of explanation. It remains satisfying, but it also hangs together in a big picture.
In fact, my only complaint is that the book isn't long enough. It is mostly a hardware book (unless you want to count Morse Code and the interpretation of flashing light bulbs as "software." By my count there are twenty chapters on hardware, and five on software. In my view only five chapters on software--one on ASCII, one on operating systems, one on floating-point arithmetic, one on high-level languages, and one on GUIs--is about ten too few. (Moreover, at one key place in his explanation (but only one) he waves his hands. He argues that it is possible to use the operation codes stored in memory to control which circuits in the processor are active. But he doesn't show how it is done.)
Charles Petzold's explanatory strategy is to start with the telegraph: with how opening and closing a switch can send an electrical signal down a wire. And he wants to build up, step by step, from that point to end with our modern computers. At the end he hopes that the reader can look back--from the graphical user interface to the high-level language software constructions that generate it, from the high-level language software constructions to the machine-language code that underlies it, from the machine-language code to the electrical signals that load, store, and add bits into the computer's processor and into the computer's memory.
But it doesn't stop there. It goes further down into how to construct an accumulator or a memory bank from logic gates. And then it goes down to how to build logic gates--either out of transistors or telegraph relays. And then deeper down, into how the electrons actually move through a transistor or through a relay and a wire.
And at the end I could look back and say, yes, I understand how this machine works in a way that I didn't understand it before. Before I understood electricity and maybe an AND gate, and I understood high level languages. But the whole vast intermediate realm was fuzzy. Now it is much clearer. I can go from the loop back to the conditional jump back to the way that what is stored in memory is fed into the processor back to the circuits that set the program counter back to the logic gates, and finally back to the doped silicon that makes up the circuit.
So I recommend this book to everyone. It is a true joy to read. And I at least could feel my mind expanding as I read it.
383 people found this helpful
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Ryan
4.0 out of 5 stars Truly Excellent, but alot of filler toward the end
Reviewed in the United States on August 24, 2013
Verified Purchase
This book is truly wonderful, and might be the best informational book I've ever read. It starts off by explaining electricity running through wires and works it's way up until you can understand machine code. And to anyone whose taken a college course in computer architecture and understands something about machine code and how higher level computer languages compile into machine code, this book will be truly enlightening as you will then understand what happens (mostly) from when you click a button on your screen, down to the silicon inside your computer.

If you have ever wanted to know how a piece of metal is able to do calculations GET THIS BOOK, it is almost perfect.

That being said the only reason I didn't give this book 5 stars is because of the latter chapters. The book does an excellent job working its way up to the electromechanical computer, but after that all of the chapters felt like non-sequiturs. They had some interesting bits of information but they didn't fell anywhere as coherent to the overall goal of the book as the early chapters did, and the thing is they weren't even that necessary really. The quickening of pace and increasing brevity becomes all too obvious by the very end of the book where the wrap up for the entire text is only ONE SENTENCE long! Reading them (the latter chapters) felt like getting forced to eat a freezer burned ice cream after the most perfect dinner you've ever eaten. Point and case: They detracted from the overall experience.

However since the book does execute its intended function almost perfectly, I have to give it four stars.
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Roberto De León
5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente estado
Reviewed in Mexico on December 12, 2023
Verified Purchase
El libro venía en buen estado, ninguna de las páginas estaba rayas o dañadas. Al exterior viene un protector pero ese sí estaba en malísimo estado. Aún así fue una buena compra
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Lucas Dias
5.0 out of 5 stars Se você sabe inglês, um dos melhores livros para entender os conceitos base da computação.
Reviewed in Brazil on August 29, 2022
Verified Purchase
É um livro que te introduz à muitos conceitos de computação de forma muito clara e lúdica. Ele não é um livro pesado que você precisa ler enquanto faz várias anotações e pesquisa vários termos. Ele é realmente um livro introdutório, se você está começando ou já trabalha com computação e quer aprender esses conhecimentos básicos, esse é provavelmente um dos melhores livros. Mesmo na UFRJ as aulas não são tão claras e tão aprofundadas como esse livro, que em seu 12º cápitulo já explica ADDER usando circuitos lógicos, algo que eu não vi cursando ciência da computação na UFRJ, com matérias que utilizavam circuitos lógicos.
One person found this helpful
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Mainak Kanjilal
5.0 out of 5 stars A must read
Reviewed in Germany on April 27, 2023
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A must read for anyone interested in the world of computing-specially aspiring Computer Engineers and scientists
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Carmelo Santisi
5.0 out of 5 stars Ottimo
Reviewed in Italy on April 1, 2023
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Alcune mollette dei miei faretti si sono rotte durante lo smontaggio per lavori e queste le hanno sostituite egregiamente.
2 people found this helpful
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Peter Johnson
5.0 out of 5 stars A stunning read - best book I read to my son
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 23, 2022
Verified Purchase
I used to read to my son every night, fact or fiction. We enjoyed a whole range of books and I treasure that time now that he's more independent.

There is only one book that stands out in our memory from that time together. It's the same for both of us. It's this book. Code.

A masterful journey from Morse code to machine code, it carefully addresses every fundamental step along the way. It wisely judges which practical detail to include, and what to abstract away. For example, when we tried to make our own 2-bit adder with transistors, we found the book was not quite adequate to support that activity!

But the purpose of the book is not to guide you through making your own computer; it is to guide you through the principles of a computer at every level. Know-how takes years to acquire; but principles can be conveyed in a book and give the deep insight needed to think about computers. This book succeeds in that endeavour.

The pace, clarity, subtle wit, care and attention in this book are second to none. Rarely have I ever trusted an author so much.

I highly recommend this book. It is in my top five ever.
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