Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software — Charles Petzold [2000]
A brief opinion
How many shoulders does the technology we use today stand on? This book by Charles Petzold seems to answer this question as it explores the roots of tools without which the world would undoubtedly be another place. Although the book has been published for some time (2000) and this may specifically be quite a few years for an industry as changing as technology, it does not in any way diminish the message and ideas raised in the text.
I really liked reading this book and enjoyed all the moments in which I discovered how certain technologies work and in which most of the current executions are based.
Worldwide relevant developments such as morse code, binary code, the telegraph, the transistors, barcodes, boolean logic, circuits with memory, von neumann machines, GUI interfaces, programming languages such as COBOL, Java or Javascript and even all hardware that is in disuse such as floppy or disks are part of the technology path that the author goes through while explaining how each of these advances has a reason to exists, in general their existence sought to make easier some process that resulted in making life enjoyable for someone out there.
I liked the way in which the book changes the way you see things that we take for granted and whose operation we do not question a bit, for example, the pixels on a computer screen, now I know that these are the graphical representation of logic gates within microscopic code-controlled switches. I like to know not only how things work, but also how they got to work.
One of the things that most stuck in my memory is how even today it is still improvements in previously established ideas, such as going from using electrical pulses to simply light (going from electrons to photons) in the cables that currently they are used to link a lot of computers to the internet, maybe you think this is some kind of logical step that have been taken today, but behind this decision there’s a lot background.
In general, I think it’s a great book that lets you realize not only how things work, but also why it is that the convention was reached that they work this way.
Although sometimes it is somewhat tedious to assimilate the information (especially when we don’t have much previous experience in the subject), I still consider that it is an open book for anyone who wants to discover the history of computing and that you don’t require much prior technical knowledge to enjoy it.
