Charles Petzold's other book, The Annotated Turing is also a great read.
“Code” 2nd Edition
161–170 of 176 posts
Re: “Code” 2nd Edition
#162Re: “Code” 2nd Edition
#163Charles Petzold's other book, The Annotated Turing is also a great read.
The Annotated Turing is probably my favorite technical and historical book, there's nothing else like it. But I'll never forgive the utterly strange typo in it:
"In a famous 1907 paper on relativity, Hilbert's friend Hermann Minkowski would coin the word Zaumreit or spacetime."
Zaumreit literally translates to "bridle riding" and is probably a play on words, Raumzeit means spacetime. This has puzzled me for over a decade now. How does this even happen?
Re: “Code” 2nd Edition
#164I’m definitely going to buy the new edition and excitedly re-read it, but it would have been deeply enjoyable if the second edition _only_ updated itself to dark mode. Could have been one of the rare actually funny April Fools Day announcements.
Re: “Code” 2nd Edition
#165Earlier quoted context omitted.
When the book “builds” a computer, I’m assuming that’s a virtual computer? If so, what language does it use?
If you're actually looking for something that does build to a virtual computer, Nand2Tetris (second edition of the book The Elements of Computing Systems that goes with it is now out) is a great companion to Code : https://www.nand2tetris.org/ . Code is more high level, Nand2Tetris and Elements is project based but covers some similar territory.
Code is not more high level it starts from as low as you can get in terms of abstractions, it explains what electricity is and how it moves through wires and and moves on to creating simple logic gates using switches.
Re: “Code” 2nd Edition
#166Is this book useful for a 10-year-old-experience software engineer (I also studied Computer Science)? I usually see this book named as “worth it” but I don’t know if it is an introduction to computer science or it is really interesting for an experienced developer.
It’s an introduction on computer architecture, meaning how to build one. Not much theory except explaining binary/boolean math, etc
Re: “Code” 2nd Edition
#167Charles Petzold's other book, The Annotated Turing is also a great read.
The Annotated Turing is probably my favorite technical and historical book, there's nothing else like it. But I'll never forgive the utterly strange typo in it: "In a famous 1907 paper on relativity, Hilbert's friend Hermann Minkowski would coin the word Zaumreit or spacetime." Zaumreit literally translates to "bridle riding" and is probably a play on words, Raumzeit means spacetime. This has puzzled me for over a de…
You find it surprising that an American author and book editor don't read or speak German?
I'm guessing the author remembered the word incorrectly and wrote it down that way. It's not hard to transpose two letters when you don't know the language.
Re: “Code” 2nd Edition
#168Any way to get this on the Internet as a web page? It's ironic how this book covers some of the most advanced technologies in our age, yet gatekeeps it all behind plain old printed pages or a "watermarked ebook."
Why is it ironic that the Author of the book would like to profit from his labors?
Re: “Code” 2nd Edition
#169Earlier quoted context omitted.
The Annotated Turing is probably my favorite technical and historical book, there's nothing else like it. But I'll never forgive the utterly strange typo in it: "In a famous 1907 paper on relativity, Hilbert's friend Hermann Minkowski would coin the word Zaumreit or spacetime." Zaumreit literally translates to "bridle riding" and is probably a play on words, Raumzeit means spacetime. This has puzzled me for over a de…
You find it surprising that an American author and book editor don't read or speak German? I'm guessing the author remembered the word incorrectly and wrote it down that way. It's not hard to transpose two letters when you don't know the language.
The book is really well researched, it includes 5 pages of selected bibliography. I doubt the author wrote about a scientist coining a word and then recalled said word from memory. There's no misspelling of the word "Entscheidungsproblem" which occurs like 80 times. It just stuck out to me, maybe the source material was already wrong, maybe he was trying to be funny or nerd snipe someone, it's a mystery.
Re: “Code” 2nd Edition
#170Earlier quoted context omitted.
When the book “builds” a computer, I’m assuming that’s a virtual computer? If so, what language does it use?
If you're actually looking for something that does build to a virtual computer, Nand2Tetris (second edition of the book The Elements of Computing Systems that goes with it is now out) is a great companion to Code : https://www.nand2tetris.org/ . Code is more high level, Nand2Tetris and Elements is project based but covers some similar territory.
Highly recommend Nand2Tetris. I completed it a few months ago as a relatively non-technical person (I had only taken CS50 as my first CS class ever in 2020) and learned a ton.