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Код. Тайный язык информатики

Charles Petzold,

Чарльз Петцольд

4.39 · Rating details · 5,335 ratings · 433 reviews

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.

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Published (first published September 29th 1999)

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Aug 14, 2011 Craig rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I'll be honest. I only read this book because it was quoted as a must read by Joel Spolsky on a stackexchange answer about how to go about learning programming (and finding out if you want/should be a programmer).

I was a little hesitant due to the year of release. Being at least some 11 years old that's a lot of time in the tech world. Ultimately though that doesn't matter. I defy any developer/programmer/system builder to read this book and not blitz through it lapping it up. Yes if you've done ...more

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Mar 15, 2013 Naessens rated it liked it · review of another edition

My opinion on this book is really divided : on the one hand I enjoy some chapters, on the other hand I hardly managed to restrain myself from flipping through other chapters. Basically, this book designs and builds a basic computer by introducing in each chapter a concept or a technology used inside computers. It was written from 1987 to 1999, consequently one shouldn't expect any description of newest technologies.

It starts really slowly with the first chapters, but then things get more and mor My opinion on this book is really divided : on the one hand I enjoy some chapters, on the other hand I hardly managed to restrain myself from flipping through other chapters. Basically, this book designs and builds a basic computer by introducing in each chapter a concept or a technology used inside computers. It was written from 1987 to 1999, consequently one shouldn't expect any description of newest technologies.

It starts really slowly with the first chapters, but then things get more and more complicated. One of the things that bother me with this book is the difference in complexity between chapters. Some chapters can be easily understood by a junior school or high school student while some of the latest chapters remind me bad memories of electronic circuits from my engineering school years. For example, a whole chapter is dedicated to explain how to communicate with your neighbour using a flashlight, an other chapter tackles the same issue with light bulbs and electrical wires, whereas all the gates or all the flip-flops are dealt with in a single chapter. I admit I have never been either fond of or good at electrokinetics, but I confess I didn't try to understand how all the electronic circuits of these later chapters work. I guess these chapters mostly interest hard code computer enthusiasts, but don't they already know these stuffs ?

Besides, few chapters are a little boring : a whole chapter to describe every op-code of Intel 8080, come on ! Does the decimal system really deserve a whole chapter ? In my opinion, decimal and alternative number systems should have been presented in a single chapter instead of two.
Moreover, the huge difference in complexity leads to some contradiction. The binary number system is so well described that a high school student can easily understand it, binary addition and subtraction are very detailed, but multiplication is done with a simple inefficient loop ! In my opinion, it would have been opportune to present at least a more efficient version based on the binary representation of the multiplicand as well as introduce exponentiation by squaring (a.k.a. square-and-multiply or binary exponentiation).
Additionally, I think that Charles Petzold tries to explain in too many details how each part works so that readers with less technical knowledge can understand, but in the end I guess these readers get lost or confused by so many details anyway, whereas a few technical references are missing. For instance, both Von Neumann and Harvard architectures are described but I don't recall them being mentioned.

Nevertheless, I really liked when the author gives historical anecdotes or references. The chapters I enjoyed the most are the ones where Charles Petzold gives readers some background history to introduce a concept or technology (for instance, Morse and Braille's codes, Bell's telegraph, the invention of telegraph relays, the evolution of transistors, chips or programming languages).

Eventually, I find it a bit contradictory for this book that most of the interesting chapters are the less technical ones indeed. Moreover, due to the important difference of knowledge required to understand chapters, I don't think someone may understand or find interesting every chapter.
...more

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Jul 23, 2012 Cardinal Biggles rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, computers

Raise your hand if you think metaphors and analogies should be used sparingly. I'll raise my hand with you. This book is for us.

After reading this book, I can see behind the pixels on my computer screen. I know what I'm really looking at. So many layers of abstraction are removed by learning about how logic gates can be arranged as processors and RAM, how code is simply a representation of those microscopic switches being flipped, and how pixels are simply a graphical interpretation of the state Raise your hand if you think metaphors and analogies should be used sparingly. I'll raise my hand with you. This book is for us.

After reading this book, I can see behind the pixels on my computer screen. I know what I'm really looking at. So many layers of abstraction are removed by learning about how logic gates can be arranged as processors and RAM, how code is simply a representation of those microscopic switches being flipped, and how pixels are simply a graphical interpretation of the state of particular switches. Moreover, I also have a little bit of an understanding of the historical evolutions these inventions and conventions went through: not just how computers work, but why they work that way and how they came to be.

The book was tougher to grasp than I thought it would be (I do not have an extensive background in electronics or programming). Although it started off easily, it became progressively more complicated except for the last chapter or two. Of course, this was to be expected, as the book began with the basic building blocks of a computer, and built progressively more complicated systems from those initial components. However, the problem wasn't really a result of the subject matter, but of the writing style, which seemed to grow more terse in later chapters. I was left with the impression that the author felt he was running out of space, which I'm sure he was; it must be difficult to keep a book with such a vast scope to a manageable size and prevent it from turning into a reference manual. I would characterize this book as grueling, but that might be because I was obstinate in making sure I fully understood every detail of every page. There were a few pages that I had to pore over repeatedly until I received a eureka moment. A few more explanatory sentences here and there would have alleviated this, but ultimately, drawing my own conclusions was very rewarding. The book seemed to recover from its gradually adopted terseness with an appreciated but sudden reference to the first chapter in the very last sentence. Someone less focused and more inclined to skim might find this book to be a bit lighter reading, but it still only took me a few days to read the whole thing.

I was surprised to see that the book did not really cover how transistors work at the electron level, which leaves what I consider to be a major gap in any understanding of how modern computers based on integrated circuits work. The text says that transistors are functionally equivalent to electromechanical relays or vacuum tubes and work similarly, but hardly any more than that. This missing knowledge is something that would have been appreciated and wouldn't have taken up much space. It seems like an especially glaring omission when juxtaposed with the inclusion of a few pages on EBCDIC, an obsolete alternative to ASCII text codes descended from paper punch cards.

Despite these minor gripes, this is a really great book, and I highly recommend it to anyone who has the interest and persistence to get through it. It teaches and ties together many mathematical and electrical concepts, and the payoff for the reader is a new perspective on computing. Despite being first published in 1999, it hardly seems dated at all, probably because it's really a history book and most of the computing history it covers happened in the 1980s and earlier. All computing history after that is basically just increasingly complex variations on those simpler foundations. A sequel would be welcome.

P.S. I think I've discovered a typo in the assembly code program on page 322. It seems to me that there should be an additional "AND A,0Fh" after the four lines of "RRC" and before the first "CALL NibbleToAscii" line. If I'm wrong, would anyone mind explaining why? And if I'm correct, would anyone mind giving me peace of mind by confirming this? Thanks! :) ...more

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Dec 03, 2009 Mike rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: nerds, geeks, smarty pants

Shelves: development

Electricity is like nothing else in this universe, and we must confront it on it's own terms. That sentence, casually buried near the beginning of the book, exemplifies the engineer's muse: a striving to become aware of the inhuman, how it operates, and to find means of creating a socket for human enterprise, something to extend the fallible chassis of our flesh.

The first two-thirds or so of this book follows a double track. One track covers the ways in which meaning may be encoded into messages ...more

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Jan 20, 2018 Yevgeniy Brikman rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Every single person in tech should read this book. Or if you're just interested in tech. Or if you just want a basic appreciation of one of the most important technologies in human history—the computer.

This book contains the best, most accessible explanation I've seen of how computers work, from hardware to software. The author manages to cover a huge range of topics—electricity, circuits, relays, binary, logic, gates, microprocessors, code, and much more—while doing a remarkable job of gradual ...more

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Apr 06, 2013 Alex Palcuie rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: favorites

If you work with computers and didn't read this book, you are lame.

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Jun 28, 2018 Igor Ljubuncic rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: software

This is a great book. Surprisingly interesting.

While the subject matter is not a new thing to me - far from it - the way the author goes about telling the story of how modern computers came to life is exciting, engaging and fun. He starts with morse and braille, talks about the principles of mathematics and information, explains the critical concept of switches, and finally moves into the world of circuit boards and binary data, cultimating in ALU. After that, he discusses the idea of analytical This is a great book. Surprisingly interesting.

While the subject matter is not a new thing to me - far from it - the way the author goes about telling the story of how modern computers came to life is exciting, engaging and fun. He starts with morse and braille, talks about the principles of mathematics and information, explains the critical concept of switches, and finally moves into the world of circuit boards and binary data, cultimating in ALU. After that, he discusses the idea of analytical and computational engines and machines developed through the late 19th and early 20th century, before we finally start seeing the modern computer around 1940s, with Turing and von Neumann laying down the foundations of what we know and use today.

The book is really cool because it's also a nostalgic trip down the memory lane. Charles mentions the famous Bell Labs, the legendary Shannon, Ritchie, Noyce, Moore, UNIX, C language, and other people and concepts without which we would not be sitting here, writing reviews on Goodreads. Or we might, but the fundamentals of the computing devices would be completely different.

Computers sound like magic, but the thing is, they are a culmination of 150 years of electric progress, 200 years of data/information progress, and about 350 years of math progress. The first boards, the first programs, the first assembler and the first compiler, they were all written by hand. Control signals are still essentially the same, and if you look at a typical x86 Intel processor, the legacy support for machine instructions goes back to the first microprocessor. The problem is, when you condense the centuries of hard work into a cool, whirring appliance, it does feel like magic.

The author wrote the book in the late 80s and then revised it in the late 90s, so some of the stuff may look quaint to us, like the mention of floppy disks, VGA displays and such. But then he also shows uncanny foresight around overall information exchange, because the information principles are universal, and he correctly predicted that Moore's Law would taper out around 2015.

He also cheated a little.

He described the flip-flop as a perpetuum mobile, which can be sort of excused, and he also skimmed on the concepts of oscillators, transistors (and did not mention capacitors), but then those are fairly complex, and I guess it's not really possible to do that without going deep into the fields of physics and electric engineering. Excusable, because the book is compelling and delightful.

Even if you have a PhD in Physics from a top university or have done computer science all your life, you can rap in ASM and name all LoTR characters by heart, this is still a good read. Do not feel like you'd be highschooling yourself with silly analogies. Far from it. This is a splendid combo of history, technology, mathematics, information, and nostalgia.

Highly recommended,
x49 x67 x6F x72 ...more

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Aug 08, 2016 Jan Martinek rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

What a ride! A book about computers “without pictures of trains carrying a cargo of zeroes and ones” — the absolute no-nonsense book on the internals of the computer. From circuits with a battery, switch and bulb to logic gates to a thorough description of the Intel 8080. Great way to fill blanks in my computer knowledge.

The book takes the approach of constructing the computer “on the paper and in our minds” — that's great when you're at least a little familiar with the topic, maybe not so when

...more

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Feb 28, 2012 Lynn rated it really liked it · review of another edition

I have been an IT professional for 20 years, but I never knew what the switches on the front panel of the Altar computer were for. I do now.

In fact, because of this book, I know many things about how a computer really works that I never did before. I think this book is great for anyone, except Electrical Engineers who would be bored. Having some background in computers probably makes this book easier to get through, but Petzold assumes nothing and starts from scratch. He does a good job of makin ...more

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Mar 05, 2009 Jule rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I LOVE this book. I regard myself an innocent computer illiterate. And Petzold helps me to walk inside an electrical circuit, a telephone, a telegraph, an adding machine, a computer, and to understand the basics behind the design, of what is going on inside. I start getting the math, the logic behind all this technology that has become pretty much the center of my life today. And I should understand the logic behind the center of my life, right?

What is so good about this book: it is written in ...more

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Aug 01, 2010 Damon rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This book basicaly tries to take you from the very basics of how to encode information, such as how binary is used to represent complex information, to understanding how a computer uses information like this to perform intricate operations. The route between those two points is the interesting part, and there was some parts that I foudn really illuminating and important. For example, I didn't understand hexadecimal numbers (or indeed what base 4, base 8, etc) numbers meant before I read this boo ...more

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Apr 04, 2017 Baq rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: byte-me

Wow. I wish I had had this book back when I was taking my first Computer Architecture course in college! It carries you along from the very fundamentals of both codes (like braille) and electric circuits in the telegraph days all the way to the web in a way that even a layperson could understand, with plenty of verbal and diagrammatic explanation. It does at points get pretty deep into the weeds but I really appreciated the author's efforts to provide such an exhaustive dive into how computers w ...more

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Jun 14, 2008 Rik Eberhardt rated it really liked it · review of another edition

In brief: be prepared to skim through at least 25% of this book! If I had this book in a seminar freshman year, I might have completed the Computer Science program. In a very fun manner, this book presents 3 years of introductory CS curricula: discrete structures, algorithms, logic gates, ... After reading this during two cross-country flights, I better understand (and remember) classes I took 10 years ago. Almost makes me want to try again (*almost*).

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Mar 06, 2019 Carlos Martinez rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Such a fun and interesting book. Petzold goes back to the very basics to explain how to build a computer (of sorts) from the ground up. First he explains binary (via morse code and Braille), then he introduces relays and switches, then gates and Boolean logic, and before you know it you're building an electronic counting machine. He continues with a potted history of transistors, microchips, RAM, ROM, character encoding and all sorts of other fun stuff.

I skipped over some pages, because I don't ...more

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Jun 28, 2018 Mark Seemann rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: software

Since I loved Charles Petzold's The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour Through Alan Turing's Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine, I wondered if he'd written other books about the foundations of computer science. Code seemed like an obvious candidate.

This book explains, in as much details as you could possibly hope, and then some, how a computer works.

Since I've been a professional software developer for about two decades, the title of the book, Code, gave me an impression that it Since I loved Charles Petzold's The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour Through Alan Turing's Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine, I wondered if he'd written other books about the foundations of computer science. Code seemed like an obvious candidate.

This book explains, in as much details as you could possibly hope, and then some, how a computer works.

Since I've been a professional software developer for about two decades, the title of the book, Code, gave me an impression that it'd mostly be about the logic of software - something that I already know intimately. The first chapters seemed to meet my expectations with their introductions to binary and hexadecimal numbers, Boolean logic, and the like.

Soon, though, I was pleasantly surprised that the book was teaching me something I didn't know: how a computer actually works. It starts by explaining how one can construct logic gates from relays, and then builds on those physical creations to explain how logic gates can be used to add numbers, how RAM works, and so on!

Like The Annotated Turing, this part of the book met me at exactly the level I needed. So technical, with no shortcuts, and nothing swept under the rug, that I felt that I deeply understand how things work, but still thrilling and engaging. Whenever I found myself with a question like, ...but how about..? or ...but what if..?, I soon learned to read on with confidence because I consistently found answers to my questions two or three paragraphs further on.

The final part of the book, again, moves into territory that should be familiar for any programmers, such as ASCII, high-level programming languages, graphical user interfaces, and such, and that, unfortunately, bored me somewhat. Thus, the overall reading experience was uneven, which is why I only give it four stars.

Would someone who's not a professional programmer rate it higher? I don't know. I could imagine that for some, the explanation of logical gates, adders, latches, etc. made from relays would be too technical. ...more

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Feb 16, 2017 Geoff Rich rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: computer-science, non-fiction

I really enjoyed most of this book. The slow unfolding of how computers are built actually work was extremely fascinating - from simple lightbulb circuits to logic gates to RAM to keyboards and monitors. Unfortunately, parts of this book seem quite dated (most anything discussing "contemporary" technology, i.e. 1990s computers) and the final chapter on the graphical revolution goes through way too much, way too fast to be of any use. A few chapters were tempting to skim For example, Petzold incl ...more

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Jan 13, 2013 Trevan Hetzel rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

With a desire to learn how the high level code (HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc.) I write on a daily basis actually makes its way through the magical land that is a computer and returns pleasantries to a human being behind the screen, I sat down with this "Code" book. The book is very intriguing from the start, beginning with the earliest forms of code (Morse, Braille, etc.). Petzold spends a long time laying down the basic blocks of electrical engineering before progressing to how bits flow through ...more

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Mar 23, 2018 Alex Telfar rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: not-at-library

Very close to my ideal book. Starts from understandable foundations and builds from there. Charles doesnt try to explain through high level metaphors (that do a poor job of capturing the truth -- I am frustrated after picking up another apparently interesting physics book only to find it contains no math), rather, he slowly builds on simple examples. And while it does get pretty complex, Charles doesnt avoid it. !!!

For a while I have been frustrated about my understanding of computers. I underst ...more

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Jun 06, 2011 K.C. rated it really liked it · review of another edition

This was a wonderful non-fiction read, especially the first 15 or so chapters. Chapter 17 ("Automation"), however, was where I began to feel a bit in over my head. While that chapter was fairly thorough, when I got to later chapters and realized I couldn't quite grok what was going on in these chips, it was hard for me to tell whether I was holding myself back by not fully understanding the concepts of Chapter 17, or if Petzold was simply glossing over some of the details that might have clued m ...more

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Jan 15, 2014 Eva rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: tech-bibles, algorithmic, non-fiction, science-and-tech, 2015

This book is quite incredible. You start with braille and simple light switches, make your way to oscillators, flip-flops and multiplexer, and suddenly you understand how computer hardware works. And that's coming from someone who already thought they "sorta" understood how it worked. I didn't really. Now I do. Best bottom-up education ever.

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Sep 10, 2009 Travis Johnson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

I really, really truly love this book. The beginning is slightly slow, but after the 1/3 mark or so, I couldn't put it down(literally. hello, 5am.)

I probably learned more about architecture from this book than the quarter in my Architecture & OS class at university.

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Feb 22, 2011 Randall Hunt rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Recommends it for: CS Majors, Everyone

Shelves: all-time-greats

Definitely one of the greats. If not already, it soon will be, a staple of computer science literature. It's both a narrative history of Computer Science and a brilliant introduction to systems and programming. This book should be a pre-requisite for introductory CS classes.

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Aug 05, 2017 Angelos rated it really liked it · review of another edition

A very nice introduction into what makes computers tick. It's detailed enough to give you a sense on how things work, yet not overly complicated to intimidate you. I really liked the gradual introduction to concepts of increasing complexity where each builds on the one before it. I feel like I've learned a lot by reading this book, especially since we had no relevant computer architecture courses in college.

That said, I have a couple of complaints.

One is that I feel the author covers the initial ...more

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Dec 31, 2018 Ieva Gr rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: technical

The book reminds me of the courses that students usually have during the first year of the University. It provides a general overview of how computers function. Starting from workings of an electrical circuit and building up to various logical elements with gradually increasing complexity. It also discusses some relevant historical moments as a typical professor in a typical lecture would do and ends with a broad overview of personal computers as they were in 1999.

The summary on the back of the ...more

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Apr 02, 2018 Jakub rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: programming

I wish I discovered this book earlier. It is a great introduction to computation and I do recommend it to everybody that would like to understand what is going on inside their laptops or phones.

I found the "big picture" to "the actual details" ratio very suitable for a casual read. There are some parts that require more attention though - especially when the author explains the details of a data flow in the computer or the way Intel 8080 chip works. Nevertheless that's an inherent characteristic ...more

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Jan 22, 2019 Eugene rated it it was amazing

Хорошее введение в схемотехнику и вообще работу компьютеров.

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Dec 05, 2018 Alb85 rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: computer-science, not-found-in-ita

Ottimo libro che ha l'ambizioso obiettivo di spiegare come è fatto un computer, dalla A alla Z. Nella prima metà vengono spiegati dei concetti specifici in modo dettagliato e chiaro. Nella seconda metà del libro la complessità dei concetti aumenta ed ovviamente diventa difficile descriverli con completezza in poche pagine. L'autore fa di tutto per facilitare la comprensione del testo, raccontando per esempio aneddoti su come si è evoluto il computer, inserendo un sacco di immagini e tabelle, ed ...more

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Jan 24, 2019 Nick rated it really liked it · review of another edition

When I started reading this book I had an inkling that this book is suitable for nerds/technical people but after reading the first few chapters I thought that probably I was wrong. As it turned out in the end, it's at best a mixture of two with a heavy hilt towards first.

The book explains in detail the working of a computer system along with the history of its progress over the year. It starts with a very innocuous example of communication between two close by living friend using just a torch. When I started reading this book I had an inkling that this book is suitable for nerds/technical people but after reading the first few chapters I thought that probably I was wrong. As it turned out in the end, it's at best a mixture of two with a heavy hilt towards first.

The book explains in detail the working of a computer system along with the history of its progress over the year. It starts with a very innocuous example of communication between two close by living friend using just a torch. After that, chapter after chapter, it builds upon that by explaining in subsequent chapters the shortcomings and the solutions developed by industry, until it reaches the working of high-level languages and how a computer does calculations!!

While the language of the book is lucid and definitely an improvement over dry engineering books that a lot of people here would be so used to, it couldn't help falling in that trap as it progresses. If you don't follow the writing closely and sequentially the preceding chapters may just be undecipherable to you. The book goes deep into circuits and their working and although it starts with a very good example and maintains continuity, it becomes very tech oriented and complex. Even after having studied a lot of the topics from the book during graduation, I myself couldn't help but skim over some parts as the writing became too technical and fully resembles an engineering book. Guess you can't escape that however much you try!!

This book is more suitable for nerds/technical-oriented readers. If you want to know how and what of your system, this book can give you a very good idea. I may even say that if that's how the engineering books were written a lot more people would benefit. If someone here, during their course of engineering, is starting with the subject of digital systems; I strongly suggest reading this book cover to cover over (say over a period of two weeks or a month) before they start with their assigned books. You would be thanking me and the author later!! For others, if you pay close attention from the very start, this is the book to gain some understanding system since a very complex topic is explained in a very easy language starting with a very basic and relatable example and improving upon it. If this book doesn't do it for you, nothing would. ...more

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Sep 23, 2018 Gustav Tonér rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Basically everything you need to build a modern computer, both hardware and software, from scratch. Perfect read after the apocalypse. Too few people grasp these relatively easy concepts that power modern society through the internet and the cell phones in our pockets. This book summarizes computer technology in a clear and concise way.

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Feb 12, 2018 Scott Johnson rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: nonfiction, computers, programming, science

This, finally, was what I was looking for in my quest to understand computers.

We start with some really boring, basic things about the most elementary circuits. It gets a pass because it's necessary if you're coming in blind, but I've taken courses in things like the physics of transistors, so I wasn't a fan personally. The same goes for assorted later sections on number systems (already overly familiar with Binary and Hex, thanks).

Then we move into how you take very simple components and constr ...more

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About Charles Petzold

Charles Petzold

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Charles Petzold has been writing about programming for Windows-based operating systems for 24 years. A Microsoft MVP for Client Application Development and a Windows Pioneer Award winner, Petzold is author of the classic Programming Windows, currently in its sixth edition and one of the best-known programming books of all time; the widely acclaimed Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware an ...more

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Quotes from Code: The Hidden ...

“Code is not like other how-computers-work books. It doesn't have big color illustrations of disk drives with arrows showing how the data sweeps into the computer. Code has no drawings of trains carrying a cargo of zeros and ones. Metaphors and similes are wonderful literary devices but they do nothing but obscure the beauty of technology.” — 10 likes

“In 1948, while working for Bell Telephone Laboratories, he published a paper in the Bell System Technical Journal entitled "A Mathematical Theory of Communication" that not only introduced the word bit in print but established a field of study today known as information theory. Information theory is concerned with transmitting digital information in the presence of noise (which usually prevents all the information from getting through) and how to compensate for that. In 1949, he wrote the first article about programming a computer to play chess, and in 1952 he designed a mechanical mouse controlled by relays that could learn its way around a maze. Shannon was also well known at Bell Labs for riding a unicycle and juggling simultaneously.” — 3 likes

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