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Код. Тайный язык информатики

Charles Petzold,

Чарльз Петцольд

4.40 · Rating details · 7,043 ratings · 575 reviews

Эта книга — азбука компьютерных технологий. Шаг за шагом автор знакомит читателя с сущностью кодирования информации, рассказывает об истории возникновения компьютеров, на практических примерах помогает освоить основные концепции информационных технологий, подробно излагает принципы работы процессора и других устройств компьютера.

Написанная живо, доступно, иногда иронично, ...more

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Paperback, 512 pages

Published 2004 by Русская Редакция (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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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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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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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. ...more

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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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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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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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Nov 28, 2019 Miranda Sikorsky rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

It is a great book, I demystified some thoughts I had about software architecture.

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

Shelves: science

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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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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May 19, 2020 Laura Marelic rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

This book is the perfect depth for novices but also people who are “in tech” and don’t really understand how it all works (like me). I can now look around at all the electronics in my house and feel like I know what’s fundamentally going on. Knowledge is empowering! The last chapter of the book felt a bit rushed and ended abruptly, but maybe that’s just my wanting the book to go on longer/end at present day. Overall, I loved it and will surely be recommending it to anyone who asks how computers ...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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Sep 14, 2019 Imi rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: science, non-fiction, own-physical, he-writes, technology, computer-science, maths, read-in-2019, 2019-top-reads

This book has really taught me a lot, despite the fact that many of the later chapters lost me somewhat; it felt like it became much more complicated and hard to follow after the earlier chapters, which were great, slowly paced and well explained. While Petzold does assume the reader is starting from scratch, I think it would be easier to follow later on if you had some background in computers/technology. As it was, I had to bombard my dad (an electronic engineer) with questions to even make it ...more

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Nov 25, 2019 Alisa Mansurova rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Just finished reading my b-day gift, the 'Code' by Charles Petzold - probably the best engineering book I've ever read. By saying 'engineering', I mean it. Unlike other computer science books, the 'Code' teaches how computers work in a nutshell. It leads you from the very basics like morse & braille codes to boolean algebra and various numeric systems, from simple tiny electric circuits which bulb the lamp to primitive adding machine (built from relays, hehe), up to history of development and en ...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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Jul 23, 2020 Michał Wilczyński rated it really liked it · review of another edition

So I've reread this book once more because I felt it was great, yet I could not give it 5/5 before.
And I'll keep my 4/5, same as it was rated before.

Generally the content of this book is great and introduces fundamentals of why and how things work in computers.
But... I have a feeling that author tried to target two disjoint audiences: people who have little knowledge of computers at all and power users who will connect current knowledge about computers with new facts from this book, experiencin ...more

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

Shelves: non-fiction, computer-science

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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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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Jun 06, 2011 KC 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: 2015, technology, non-fiction, science-and-tech, algorithmic, decade1990s

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. ...more

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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. ...more

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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. ...more

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Apr 24, 2020 Ondrej Urban rated it it was amazing · review of another edition

Shelves: spiritual-presence

One - in this case one in how the Queen would use this - cannot really talk about this book without comparing it to But How Do It Know? - The Basic Principles of Computers for Everyone, since they cover a lot of the same ground (and one has read the other one first).

Code's mission in life is to help the user understand the basic principles behind the computer design and convince them that it's not actually that tricky and that your great-grandparents could have build one themselves. Naturally, t One - in this case one in how the Queen would use this - cannot really talk about this book without comparing it to But How Do It Know? - The Basic Principles of Computers for Everyone, since they cover a lot of the same ground (and one has read the other one first).

Code's mission in life is to help the user understand the basic principles behind the computer design and convince them that it's not actually that tricky and that your great-grandparents could have build one themselves. Naturally, there is a lot of overlap with But How Do It Know, since there don't seem to be better ways do design a basic RAM. Starting with looking for ways to transfer information, Code goes from flashlights to telegraph to relays to the logical gates, doing a better job than the other book, which introduces the NAND gate as the basic black box and goes from there. Point Code, reading about that is super enlightening and exciting!

The middle part of both books is kind of similar, spend building basic computer parts out of logical gates. I'd maybe lean towards Code doing a bit of a better job reminding the reader of the basics but the other book prevails in its focus and overall a better teaching approach, explaining every single thing done, while computer parts seems to start randomly appearing at some point of Code (buses and registers being two examples).

In the final part, Code goes a bit overboard with talking about not-so-basic stuff that at this level needs to necessarily happen at a bit of a high level. Disregarding it having been written in the later 90s and talking about DVDs will at some point take over from CDs as the main software distribution channel, I had a feeling that the author could have stopped a bit sooner, or perhaps expand the chapter on compilers a bit more.

In any case, when it comes to the overall impression, the How book wins thanks to its laser-tight focus on building a computer and nothing else, while Code seems more open-ended and talking about particular technologies specific for a given time period makes it feel a bit aged. That said, Code is a great book to read to refresh your knowledge of the basic computer design that can add a lot of basics and fill in the picture. Highly recommended! ...more

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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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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 Код. Тайный язык ...

“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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Quotes from Код. Тайный язык ...

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Preview — Код. Тайный язык информатики by Charles Petzold

Код. Тайный язык информатики

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