I bought this on a lark from Bleak House Books in Hong Kong during one of those COVID Christmas interludes aimlessly browsing online shops for gift ideas. It seemed a cute and light idea, and our son enjoys comics... maybe it would suit?
On arrival, it became clear this is way beyond our 7yo. This is a surprisingly detailed yet comprehensible intro to how computers work at the physical, electronic level... all stuff I didn't understand, despite twelve years as a computer programmer. I guess target audience is teens and up.
Tonally light and silly, you need to enter with a bit of humor for the thin framing story which exists solely to allow dialogue... but it works! And the 101-level tech education is thorough.
This won't tell you everything you want to know about how your smartphone works, although by the end I had an inkling of the outline. It's more like an electronic computing version of a guide to simple & complex machines -- a book like that won't suddenly make entirely clear all the complexities of how frozen pizza factories work, but you'll have a much better sense of what's happening inside all the metal contraptions.
Highly recommend for anyone who finds high tech dizzying and also cares enough to understand the basics. Probably not suitable for anyone who already passed a college course on the topic.
Covers the topic fairly well, utilizing humor. Only touched on RISC and the stack in passing.
The backstory was fun. The comics themselves were not terribly detailed, and single finger pointing was frequent. Often the story reverted to paragraphs with just a character head - this is a wordy discussion.
It felt as much like a book on assembly language as a book about microprocessors. I was expecting more about RISC and FPGA - both quite prevalent in embedded designs. The rice cooker was a good example, but it would have been nice to delve further into the design - a sample program for running the machine, for instance.
I felt similar about The Manga Guide to Calculus, which I read in 2010 and didn't review (early days on goodreads). Maybe I should try a Manga Guide for a subject I don't know much about instead :)
The first Manga Guide book that I could tolerate reading. Having said that, I found this one quite a delightful read. The overexpressive characters is a taste I still wait to acquire (ahem) though in this case of hardware engineering... I know a lot of people that share the same personality trait as the expert in the book 😁.
I was compelled to try this book after reading a few other technical books that didn't quite relay the passion of designing digital electronics. This book had good reviews and did a great job of making a seemingly drab and unstimulating series of concepts into a well threaded, understanding-based yet fast paced leisure activity.
Overall a good read. Certainly recommended for the uninitiated.
If you think you will like this book you most likely will. After reading this book I had a class on digital systems. I was able to fallow along with the class easier because I knew the ideas that would be hit on in making our CPU. It touched on everything in my class except Boolean algebra. Seeing as I got a good grade in the class and actually referenced this book in the class. I think it earned my 5 stars.
This is a light and humorous introduction to a rather dry and dense topic. It does a pretty good job of breaking things down for simplicity, and injecting over the top anime reactions to things. Wish there was a bit more variation on the storytelling side of things, it gets repetitive as you go on, but hey it does deliver a lot if technical info
I highly, highly recommend this book for anyone taking their first discrete math class or hardware class in college. The explanations are very intuitive and helpful, making this a great companion to your regular textbook. It's well worth the investment of a day or two to read through it.
Came across this thing as I was trying to learn the basics of semiconductors, not that I like comics. The Japanese cartoons are obnoxious, perverted, and annoying. I soon got disgusted and gave up. The Code is a much better, formal, and enjoyable read.
This is a good book to read on vacation if you want an overview of the CPU. It obviously doesn't go in depth and don't have a formal structure of topics and that's what I needed .
As a cs grad myself I can say that you would definitely revise the topics in a fun way.
Great in many ways but the cartoon part (pretty funny!) and textbook part (pretty advanced!) fight each other more than they complement each other. Not an easy book to learn from.
Brilliant concept and an execution that starts strong but gets increasingly laissez faire as the it hits the steep learning curve of more advanced concepts.
Викладачі за 5 роки невиразного декламування теорії на лекціях з декількох дисциплін, де структура процесора згадувалась так і не змогли вкласти в мою голову діаграму роботи процесора так, щоб я її не забула після модуля, а от манга змогла. Навіть дискретка після неї перестала бути такою відірваною від реальності.. academia could never
It was a really good book, and I also learned a lot about computers, microchips, Ram and Rom, I/O, ect. If you needed/ wanted to learn the basics of computer parts and how they work, i'd read this book.