Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

Portada
Microsoft Press, 2000 M10 11 - 400 páginas

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.
Using everyday objects and familiar language systems such as Braille and Morse code, author Charles Petzold weaves an illuminating narrative for anyone who’s ever wondered about the secret inner life of computers and other smart machines.
It’s a cleverly illustrated and eminently comprehensible story—and along the way, you’ll discover you’ve gained a real context for understanding today’s world of PCs, digital media, and the Internet. No matter what your level of technical savvy, CODE will charm you—and perhaps even awaken the technophile within.

 

Páginas seleccionadas

Contenido

Table of Contents Preface to the Paperback Edition
Best Friends
Codes and Combinations
Braille and Binary Codes
Anatomy of a Flashlight
Seeing Around Corners
Telegraphs and Relays
Our Ten Digits
Feedback and FlipFlops
Bytes and
An Assemblage of Memory
Automation
From Abaci to Chips
Two Classic Microprocessors
ASCII and a Cast of Characters
Get on the

Alternatives to
Bit by Bit by
Logic and Switches
Gates Not Bill
A Binary Adding Machine
But What About Subtraction?
The Operating System
Fixed Point Floating Point
Languages High and
The Graphical Revolution
A Acknowledgments
B Bibliography

Términos y frases comunes

Acerca del autor (2000)

Charles Petzold has been writing about Windows programming for 25 years. A Windows Pioneer Award winner, Petzold is author of the classic Programming Windows, the widely acclaimed Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, Programming Windows Phone 7, and more than a dozen other books.

Información bibliográfica