Author: Charles Petzold
Date read: 2022-01-20
The book strives to cover the history of advent of computers, from how the processors function to the relation among different components of what we today call computers.
To convey the meaning of "Code", author goes to the very primitive methods of communications: Morse code, Braille code, telegraph and relays. Afterwards, the book lays the foundation on how communication via binary numbers can improve simplicity and quality of messaging. Then author explains the building blocks of computers, from logic gates to adders, subtractor, the first microprocessors, architecture and opcodes of the first microprocessors and etc.
What I liked about the book was the concept of "invention of zero as being one of the biggest breakthroughs, comparing to e.g. Roman numeric system".
The book claims that it's suitable for everyone, and anyone can understand how the computers work by reading 'Code'. However, in my opinion the book does not have a uniformed structure and is heterogeneous. In the first half of the book the authors discusses very basic and trivial concepts, such as "how to count binary numbers" and "turning on a lamp with some trivial electronic circuits". This changes radically in the seconds half of the book, where the reader faces long and tedious explanations on for instance opcodes of various microprocessor architectures. In other words, the book doesn't have a well-defined audience, because it's too complicated for non-technical people and it's tedious for software engineers.
Unfortunately Code is not a book that I would recommend to others.
Rating: 2/5