My favorite Petzold book is 'Programming Windows 95'
I got the Fifth Edition. A book that's served me well. Learning the Win32 API, holding open doors, improvised weapon, it does it all.
It is a very large book indeed.
“Code” 2nd Edition
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Re: “Code” 2nd Edition
#22This book was absolutely essential when I was first sinking my teeth into software programming. Things that seemed either arbitrary or completely mysterious suddenly made sense now that I had a contextual understanding of how computers worked . Without having that knowledge, I think my career would have been vastly more difficult and frustrating. While I understand many “get started programming” books/tutorials put a…
Uh, as someone with too many years of programming behind me to imagine that, can you mention some concrete things that you found arbitrary or completely mysterious, and that the booked cleared up for you? Thanks.
Re: “Code” 2nd Edition
#23I bought Code and Code Complete around the same time. And started reading Code before switching to Complete. And now I'm reminded I have the 1st Edition still sitting on my bookcase read about 1/3 the way through.
Re: “Code” 2nd Edition
#24Looking back it's really strange that nowhere in our CS/Soft Eng. curriculum is it covered exactly what is meant by the term "abstraction" when it comes to how a computer works. That it's all, after all, shuffling of electrons (underlying MOSFET chemistry notwithstanding) and signals is the missing link. There's other books out there, and Ben Eater's website, that indepth show how to construct processor, gates, store…
When I was in school 'computer engineering' was the degree you wanted for that level of understanding. It was a blend of 50/50 computer science and electrical engineering. You'd learn enough analog EE to understand transistors and enough digital EE to understand logic and computer architecture (this is really where you learn the gory details of how a CPU works internally). Then you'd focus on enough CS to flesh out low level OS, systems programming, etc. to make it all work. Basically learn enough to go from nothing but a circuit diagram to a computer booting up a display with a login prompt for an OS you designed and built, on hardware you designed and built.
Re: “Code” 2nd Edition
#25My favorite Petzold book is 'Programming Windows 95'
Definitely a classic from back when books were sold by weight.
Re: “Code” 2nd Edition
#26This book was absolutely essential when I was first sinking my teeth into software programming. Things that seemed either arbitrary or completely mysterious suddenly made sense now that I had a contextual understanding of how computers worked . Without having that knowledge, I think my career would have been vastly more difficult and frustrating. While I understand many “get started programming” books/tutorials put a…
Same. I think some of us learn best by having a map of the territory and an understanding of how everything all fits together first. Having that better helps us deep-dive into and master specific areas. This one single book provides that map.
Absolutely. I tend to be mystified and lost without some way to place what I'm doing in some larger context, even if that context is super-vague or wrong in technical ways.
Had several teachers who utterly refused to provide that, repeating "it'll all make sense eventually." Well, it did, after I got better teachers.
Re: “Code” 2nd Edition
#27My favorite Petzold book is 'Programming Windows 95'
I got the Fifth Edition. A book that's served me well. Learning the Win32 API, holding open doors, improvised weapon, it does it all.
As doors got heavier it became necessary to add Petzold's windows programming with MFC book to the stack too, another massive (and great at the time) tome.
Re: “Code” 2nd Edition
#28I took a course like 10 years from Charles. He was amazing and I'm sure this book is just as amazing.
Re: “Code” 2nd Edition
#29Looking back it's really strange that nowhere in our CS/Soft Eng. curriculum is it covered exactly what is meant by the term "abstraction" when it comes to how a computer works. That it's all, after all, shuffling of electrons (underlying MOSFET chemistry notwithstanding) and signals is the missing link. There's other books out there, and Ben Eater's website, that indepth show how to construct processor, gates, store…
You're describing what was the CompSci option for an egineering degree when I went to Uni the first time. If you look at another great book for learning the "full picture", Nand to Tetris, Comp Sci is the second half of the book while Engineering seems to fill the space between physics and low-level software.
Re: “Code” 2nd Edition
#30Code is my favorite technical book of all time [1]. Charles does an amazing job of building a computer up from basic principles "two young boys who want to communicate after their parents tell them to go to bed at night" all the way to modern (for 1999) computers. He layers abstraction on top of abstraction all the way to a working computer. My only (slight) disappointment in the book is that he tries to cover operating systems -> object oriented programming in a couple of chapters at the end. That could have been a multi-volume series in its own right.
It goes really well with Elements of Computing Systems (2nd ed) [2] which I kind of think of as a "lab manual" where you get to build a computer from first principles.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw...
[2] https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Computing-Systems-second-Pri...