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Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software Second Printing Edition

4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 2,768 ratings

From the dots and dashes of Morse code to the 0s and 1s of computer programming, ""Code"" describes the ingenious ways humans have adapted language systems -- code -- to invent the machinery of the modern age. By examining the dialogues we developed for and through the communication tools of the industrial revolution, readers discover they have a context for comprehending today's world of computers, bar code scanners, and fiber optics. The work of legendary computer book author Charles Petzold has influenced an entire generation of programmers -- and with ""Code"", Microsoft Press is proud to bring this extraordinary writer's compelling narrative style and wit to a general audience.

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Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

Charles Petzold's latest book, Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, crosses over into general-interest nonfiction from his usual programming genre. It's a carefully written, carefully researched gem that will appeal to anyone who wants to understand computer technology at its essence. Readers learn about number systems (decimal, octal, binary, and all that) through Petzold's patient (and frequently entertaining) prose and then discover the logical systems that are used to process them. There's loads of historical information too. From Louis Braille's development of his eponymous raised-dot code to Intel Corporation's release of its early microprocessors, Petzold presents stories of people trying to communicate with (and by means of) mechanical and electrical devices. It's a fascinating progression of technologies, and Petzold presents a clear statement of how they fit together.

The real value of Code is in its explanation of technologies that have been obscured for years behind fancy user interfaces and programming environments, which, in the name of rapid application development, insulate the programmer from the machine. In a section on machine language, Petzold dissects the instruction sets of the genre-defining Intel 8080 and Motorola 6800 processors. He walks the reader through the process of performing various operations with each chip, explaining which opcodes poke which values into which registers along the way. Petzold knows that the hidden language of computers exhibits real beauty. In Code, he helps readers appreciate it. --David Wall

Topics covered: Mechanical and electrical representations of words and numbers, number systems, logic gates, performing mathematical operations with logic gates, microprocessors, machine code, memory and programming languages.

About the Author

Charles Petzold wrote the classic Programming Windows®, which is currently in its fifth edition and one of the best-known and widely used programming books of all time. He was honored in 1994 with the Windows Pioneer Award, presented by Microsoft® founder Bill Gates and Windows Magazine. He has been programming with Windows since first obtaining a beta Windows 1.0 SDK in the spring of 1985, and he wrote the very first magazine article on Windows programming in 1986. Charles is an MVP for Client Application Development and the author of several other books including Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software.

Product details

  • ASIN ‏ : ‎ 073560505X
  • Publisher ‏ : ‎ Microsoft Press; Second Printing edition (October 23, 1999)
  • Language ‏ : ‎ English
  • Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 393 pages
  • ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 073940752X
  • ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0735605053
  • Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.75 pounds
  • Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.34 x 1.38 x 9.57 inches
  • Customer Reviews:
    4.6 4.6 out of 5 stars 2,768 ratings

About the author

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Charles Petzold
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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.

Customer reviews

4.6 out of 5 stars
2,768 global ratings

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Customers say

Customers find the book provides an accessible overview of underlying topics related to computer codes and hardware. They describe it as interesting, entertaining, and a joy to read. Readers praise the writing quality as well-written, easy to understand, and informal. The narrative is described as illuminating and compelling. They appreciate the thoughtful design and creative approach to computer work.

AI-generated from the text of customer reviews

273 customers mention "Encyclopedia content"239 positive34 negative

Customers find the book's content easy to understand and accessible. It provides an excellent introduction into the inner workings of a computer, with enough detail to satisfy anyone. The author does a remarkable job of explaining code, hardware, software, and how all these elements work together. They leave having read code with a clear idea of what's going on in a computer.

"...is a brilliant, entertaining, easily understandable & accessible overview of underlying topics that relate to how "codes", electronic signals..." Read more

"...He has hit the sweet spot exactly. Enough detail to satisfy anyone...." Read more

"...For what it is, it's extremely accessible. And I don't think there's another book quite like this, certainly not of this quality...." Read more

"...since then read numerous books on computing that I found to be extremely interesting, but without the spark provided by this book I would still be..." Read more

214 customers mention "Readability"203 positive11 negative

Customers find the book easy to read and engaging. They describe it as a good reference for beginners with an entertaining beginning.

"As many other reviews said, the first part of the book is a brilliant, entertaining, easily understandable & accessible overview of underlying..." Read more

"...So I recommend this book to everyone. It is a true joy to read. And I at least could feel my mind expanding as I read it." Read more

"...I somehow stumbled on this book...and this is the book that kindled my interest...." Read more

"...This is where this wonderful book came into play...." Read more

97 customers mention "Writing quality"80 positive17 negative

Customers find the book well-written and easy to understand. They appreciate the informal tone and clear explanations. The author explains everything in sequence, using simple examples and few words. Overall, readers feel the writing quality is great and they appreciate how it helps them write better programs.

"...It is extremely well written...." Read more

"...Petzold takes us on a journey in short, easy-to-read, and occasionally humorous chapters, staring from two young children passing messages to each..." Read more

"...software including operating systems, computer languages from Assembly to high level languages and some input output device analysis...." Read more

"...book is fantastic, it's entertaining yes, but more importantly it's very clear, concise, and really appeals to my aforementioned learning style...." Read more

50 customers mention "Narrative quality"46 positive4 negative

Customers find the narrative engaging and comprehensible. They describe it as an interesting journey through history of communication, logic, and the binary system. The book provides valuable historical context and is described as a digestible story.

"...The chapters on memory, automation and microprocessors is simply brilliant and the detailed sketches of the varying states of these components makes..." Read more

"...Petzold takes us on a journey in short, easy-to-read, and occasionally humorous chapters, staring from two young children passing messages to each..." Read more

"...The following chapters were quite interesting but I felt too short. It felt like all the good stuff was in the last 100 pages or so...." Read more

"...level computer languages compile into machine code, this book will be truly enlightening as you will then understand what happens (mostly) from when..." Read more

15 customers mention "Design"15 positive0 negative

Customers appreciate the book's design. They say it's thoughtful and creative, providing a refreshing look at subjects that are taken for granted. The book encourages thinking and questions about computer architecture and digital design.

"...information encoding, electricity, computer hardware, computer architecture, software including operating systems, computer languages from..." Read more

"...etc.--and how all these components interact--in a way that is personable and understandable, but without dumbing it down...." Read more

"...book tells how it explains computers and technology; it does that beautifully, creatively...." Read more

"...That being said it really is a good quality book, both in subject and in substance...." Read more

13 customers mention "Computer work"13 positive0 negative

Customers find the book useful for understanding computers. It starts with the basics and works its way up to modern computers without skipping much along the way. The explanations become clearer and easier to understand. The detailed workings of modern computers are covered, including integrated circuits, performance improvements, and power consumption benefits.

"...The chapters on memory, automation and microprocessors is simply brilliant and the detailed sketches of the varying states of these components makes..." Read more

"...Petzold wrote this book so that anyone could understand code and how computers work...." Read more

"...the only novel thing that is going on is the miniaturization, performance improvements and power consumption benefits...." Read more

"...From that chapter onward, it is about the relatively detailed working of a modern computer - e.g. how integrated circuits (chips) work, what..." Read more

13 customers mention "Entertainment value"13 positive0 negative

Customers enjoy the book's entertainment value. They find it engaging and fun, with no boredom.

"...many other reviews said, the first part of the book is a brilliant, entertaining, easily understandable & accessible overview of underlying topics..." Read more

"...This book is fantastic, it's entertaining yes, but more importantly it's very clear, concise, and really appeals to my aforementioned learning style..." Read more

"...has a great writer's voice and a true talent for making a complicated subject fun to learn. Thank you for such an awesome book!..." Read more

"...Neither of us has been bored...." Read more

13 customers mention "Pacing"7 positive6 negative

Customers have mixed opinions about the pacing. Some find it slow in the beginning, using metaphors to explain the basics of encoding. Others feel it moves too fast in the middle and the final chapter seems rushed.

"...The books starts off slowly, using metaphors to explain the basics of encoding and basic calculation...." Read more

"...It felt rushed & tacked on...." Read more

"...the tone of the book is very informal and easy to read, and moves at just the right pace...." Read more

"...The pacing, in my opinion, was too slow in the beginning and too fast in the middle. You'll want to take your time with this book...." Read more

A classic
5 out of 5 stars
A classic
I have just finished this very well written and informative book. Much has been said about it so I won't repeat the good points. One thing however is that if you are somewhat uninitiated reader(which is basically the main target audience of this book) you need to have patience and grit to finish it. I understand the subject is not very easy , and even though material is explained well, expect to get stuck at several points. Some knowledge of math(mainly basic probability) will help and repeat reading of problematic parts will likely clear all doubts that you might have.I am impressed by the practicality and scope of this book, so I ordered second, newer edition.
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Top reviews from the United States

  • Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2017
    As many other reviews said, the first part of the book is a brilliant, entertaining, easily understandable & accessible overview of underlying topics that relate to how "codes", electronic signals, alternate number systems & computers came about.

    The latter sections are considerably more dense, and required going back a few times, tracing the circuit diagrams with my finger, and Googling the finer points of electrical circuitry, how to do math in binary, octal, and hexadecimal, and other assorted topics covered in this wide-ranging work.

    I had classes a LONG time ago in electrical engineering, as well as a good amount of experience with binary, hex(adecimal), and programming, so given that background I could follow along fairly easily & connect the concepts to my existing knowledge. If you don't have any background at all in EE, Comp Sci, or programming, be prepared to re-read & re-re-read the chapters on logic gates, circuits, and how these bits of hardware physically compute & store basic arithmetic values in order to perform complex tasks. Those sections were the most challenging, but ultimately for me provided the most valuable information because it helped fill in the missing pieces of the puzzle in my prior knowledge.

    For anyone who wants to "learn to code," but you find yourself confused by or not really bothering to understand concepts like pointers, memory addresses, Boolean logic, or esoteric & ancient magic spells like "XOR" or Assembly Language, this book does an excellent job of explaining in real, physical hardware terms exactly what those mean and how they work.

    My only critique is that after ALL that fine-grained detail & historical backstory for most of the book, the final chapter crams roughly the last 40 years of computing into a few short pages, covering everything from Graphical User Interfaces & image compression to the internet & (rather outdated) descriptions of web browsers. It felt rushed & tacked on.

    I'd really like to see an update, or a companion book, that covers newer topics in such detail as the first half of this book.
    Overall though, this was a fantastic, educational if at-times-dense read. I had to work at it a bit, but that was the point.
    If you hate to read, don't want to learn, and are too lazy to work at it - buy it anyway to give him another $15 and then write a review explaining why it's the book/author's fault :P
    3 people found this helpful
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  • Reviewed in the United States on November 27, 1999
    I think that this is the best book that I have read all year. In some sense this is the book that I have been looking for for twenty-five years--the book that will enable me to understand how a computer does what it does. And--given the centrality of computers in our age--it has been a long wait. But now it is over. Charles Petzold (1999), Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software does a much better job than anything else I have ever seen in explaining computers--what they really are, and how they really work.
    Have you ever wondered just how your computers really work? I mean, really, really work. Not as in "an electrical signal from memory tells the processor the number to be added," but what the electrical signal is, and how it accomplishes the magic of switching on the circuits that add while switching off the other circuits that would do other things with the number. I have. I have wondered this a lot over the past decades.
    Yet somehow over the past several decades my hunger for an explanation has never been properly met. I have listened to people explain how two switches wired in series are an "AND"--only if both switches are closed will the lightbulb light. I have listened to people explain how IP is a packet-based communications protocol and TCP is a connection-based protocol yet the connection-based protocal can ride on top of the packet-based protocol. Somehow these explanations did not satisfy. One seemed like answering "how does a car work?" by telling how in the presence of oxygen carbon-hydrogen bonds are broken and carbon dioxide and water are created. The other seemed like anwering "how does a car work" by telling how if you step on the accelerator the car moves forward.
    Charles Petzold is different. He has hit the sweet spot exactly. Enough detail to satisfy anyone. Yet the detail is quickly built up as he ascends to higher and higher levels of explanation. It remains satisfying, but it also hangs together in a big picture.
    In fact, my only complaint is that the book isn't long enough. It is mostly a hardware book (unless you want to count Morse Code and the interpretation of flashing light bulbs as "software." By my count there are twenty chapters on hardware, and five on software. In my view only five chapters on software--one on ASCII, one on operating systems, one on floating-point arithmetic, one on high-level languages, and one on GUIs--is about ten too few. (Moreover, at one key place in his explanation (but only one) he waves his hands. He argues that it is possible to use the operation codes stored in memory to control which circuits in the processor are active. But he doesn't show how it is done.)
    Charles Petzold's explanatory strategy is to start with the telegraph: with how opening and closing a switch can send an electrical signal down a wire. And he wants to build up, step by step, from that point to end with our modern computers. At the end he hopes that the reader can look back--from the graphical user interface to the high-level language software constructions that generate it, from the high-level language software constructions to the machine-language code that underlies it, from the machine-language code to the electrical signals that load, store, and add bits into the computer's processor and into the computer's memory.
    But it doesn't stop there. It goes further down into how to construct an accumulator or a memory bank from logic gates. And then it goes down to how to build logic gates--either out of transistors or telegraph relays. And then deeper down, into how the electrons actually move through a transistor or through a relay and a wire.
    And at the end I could look back and say, yes, I understand how this machine works in a way that I didn't understand it before. Before I understood electricity and maybe an AND gate, and I understood high level languages. But the whole vast intermediate realm was fuzzy. Now it is much clearer. I can go from the loop back to the conditional jump back to the way that what is stored in memory is fed into the processor back to the circuits that set the program counter back to the logic gates, and finally back to the doped silicon that makes up the circuit.
    So I recommend this book to everyone. It is a true joy to read. And I at least could feel my mind expanding as I read it.
    385 people found this helpful
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Top reviews from other countries

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  • Roberto De León
    5.0 out of 5 stars Excelente estado
    Reviewed in Mexico on December 12, 2023
    El libro venía en buen estado, ninguna de las páginas estaba rayas o dañadas. Al exterior viene un protector pero ese sí estaba en malísimo estado. Aún así fue una buena compra
  • Lucas Dias
    5.0 out of 5 stars Se você sabe inglês, um dos melhores livros para entender os conceitos base da computação.
    Reviewed in Brazil on August 29, 2022
    É um livro que te introduz à muitos conceitos de computação de forma muito clara e lúdica. Ele não é um livro pesado que você precisa ler enquanto faz várias anotações e pesquisa vários termos. Ele é realmente um livro introdutório, se você está começando ou já trabalha com computação e quer aprender esses conhecimentos básicos, esse é provavelmente um dos melhores livros. Mesmo na UFRJ as aulas não são tão claras e tão aprofundadas como esse livro, que em seu 12º cápitulo já explica ADDER usando circuitos lógicos, algo que eu não vi cursando ciência da computação na UFRJ, com matérias que utilizavam circuitos lógicos.
  • Mainak Kanjilal
    5.0 out of 5 stars A must read
    Reviewed in Germany on April 27, 2023
    A must read for anyone interested in the world of computing-specially aspiring Computer Engineers and scientists
  • Peter Johnson
    5.0 out of 5 stars A stunning read - best book I read to my son
    Reviewed in the United Kingdom on December 23, 2022
    I used to read to my son every night, fact or fiction. We enjoyed a whole range of books and I treasure that time now that he's more independent.

    There is only one book that stands out in our memory from that time together. It's the same for both of us. It's this book. Code.

    A masterful journey from Morse code to machine code, it carefully addresses every fundamental step along the way. It wisely judges which practical detail to include, and what to abstract away. For example, when we tried to make our own 2-bit adder with transistors, we found the book was not quite adequate to support that activity!

    But the purpose of the book is not to guide you through making your own computer; it is to guide you through the principles of a computer at every level. Know-how takes years to acquire; but principles can be conveyed in a book and give the deep insight needed to think about computers. This book succeeds in that endeavour.

    The pace, clarity, subtle wit, care and attention in this book are second to none. Rarely have I ever trusted an author so much.

    I highly recommend this book. It is in my top five ever.
  • Bo Folmer
    5.0 out of 5 stars Great book.
    Reviewed in the Netherlands on September 25, 2022
    I definitely recommend it to anyone interested in computers/computer science.