Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

by Charles Petzold

Overview

Timeless and accessible, Code can show anyone how computers really work. You'll gain a depth of understanding rivaling that of electrical engineers, as you come to recognize the beauty and elegance that made the computer one of the past century's greatest human achievements. Charles Petzold has fully updated his classic guide to reflect dramatic changes to the experience of computing, modernize cultural and technology references throughout, add even more powerfully intuitive 2-color line drawings, and present five new chapters.

Code, Second Edition first establishes what numeric codes are, and then walks you one "baby step" at a time through the basic theoretical and applied concepts required to construct a simple computer. For more effective learning, Petzold describes rudimentary digital technology, while also revealing how today's world of media and connectivity was built through the pervasive use of numeric codes.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780137909100
Publisher:	Pearson Education
Publication date:	08/07/2022
Edition description:	2nd ed.
Pages:	480
Sales rank:	78,267
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.05(h) x 0.97(d)

About the Author

Charles Petzold is also the author of The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour through Alan Turing’s Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine (Wiley, 2008). He wrote a bunch of other books too, but they’re mostly about programming applications for Microsoft Windows, and they’re all obsolete now. He lives in New York City with his wife, historian and novelist Deirdre Sinnott, and two cats named Honey and Heidi. His website is www.charlespetzold.com.

Table of Contents

Preface to the Second Edition

Chapter One: Best Friends

Chapter Two: Codes and Combinations

Chapter Three: Braille and Binary Codes

Chapter Four: Anatomy of a Flashlight

Chapter Five: Communicating Around Corners

Chapter Six: Logic with Switches

Chapter Seven: Telegraphs and Relays

Chapter Eight: Relays and Gates

Chapter Nine: Our Ten Digits

Chapter Ten: Alternative 10s

Chapter Eleven: Bit by Bit by Bit

Chapter Twelve: Bytes and Hexadecimal

Chapter Thirteen: From ASCII to Unicode

Chapter Fourteen: Adding with Logic Gates

Chapter Fifteen: Is This for Real?

Chapter Sixteen: But What About Subtraction?

Chapter Seventeen: Feedback and Flip-Flops

Chapter Eighteen: Let’s Build a Clock!

Chapter Nineteen: An Assemblage of Memory

Chapter Twenty: Automating Arithmetic

Chapter Twenty-One: The Arithmetic Logic Unit

Chapter Twenty-Two: Registers and Busses

Chapter Twenty-Three: CPU Control Signals

Chapter Twenty-Four: Loops, Jumps, and Calls

Chapter Twenty-Five: Peripherals

Chapter Twenty-Six: The Operating System

Chapter Twenty-Seven: Coding

Chapter Twenty-Eight: The World Brain