Questions About The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour Through Alan Turing's Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine

Reader Q&A

To ask other readers questions about The Annotated Turing, please sign up.

Answered Questions (1)

Is this book too technical or dense for somebody with only basic CS knowledge?

M Hi Isabell,
I think you'd be fine and get the 'gist'.

Petzold states in the introduction that that he'd like to make Turing's paper accessible to audien…moreHi Isabell,
I think you'd be fine and get the 'gist'.

Petzold states in the introduction that that he'd like to make Turing's paper accessible to audiences beyond IT guys. If I remember correctly he stated that he's writing for an audience with High School Math background, but he also states that part III is mathematically quite complex.
I hope I have given that back properly.

Mind you, with my A Level math I would have missed quite some concepts, then again, I was shit at math at Uni and can follow the book.
Though I do not claim to 'really' understand it, at the deepest level.

While in the realms of computer science, I certainly feel the book's far more about math and logic than computers. It is in any case a massively enjoyable read.

If this kind of thing floats your boat, but you want something less academic, try Goedel Escher Bach by Hofstadter.

njoy

(less)

flag

Unanswered Questions

About Goodreads Q&A

Ask and answer questions about books!

You can pose questions to the Goodreads community with Reader Q&A, or ask your favorite author a question with Ask the Author.

See Featured Authors Answering Questions

Learn more