{"id":280,"date":"2022-11-27T19:39:35","date_gmt":"2022-11-27T16:39:35","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/keremgurevin.com\/?p=280"},"modified":"2026-04-24T20:52:49","modified_gmt":"2026-04-24T17:52:49","slug":"it-teaches-you-everything-with-one-simple-thing-code-by-charles-petzold","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/keremgurevin.com\/?p=280","title":{"rendered":"It teaches you everything, with one simple thing &#8211; Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Hey you, yes you, the one looking at the screen. You wonder how things like communication and computers were invented and how they work but aren&#8217;t tech savvy? Well, this book is for you, my friend. Now if you wish, come with me to this not-very-deep rabbit hole, and let us see what kind of beautiful engineering is behind your computers at its very core and how it all started&#8230;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I got my hands on Code (The First Version) about two months ago, right after the updated version was published. And for the first few days it just lied on a bookshelf, I looked at it and it looked at me, I had no motivation to read it whatsoever. However, in the second week, I got kinda ill, I was laying in bed trying to sleep. But then, I saw it. It was shining&#8230; I got up, ran to my bookshelf, and started reading it. <br>When I first started reading Code, it was&#8230; Rather weird, I expected to see graphs and formulas, but I was astonished to see that the author managed to use everyday objects and language systems such as Braille and Morse code to simplify profound topics such as <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/gI-qXk7XojA\">logic gates<\/a>. And when backed up with pinpointed examples, these examples tend to be self-explanatory. I continued reading the first topic and realized that the way Petzold used was genius! He often doesn&#8217;t dive deep into topics but shows you an example that is a buildup to the issue, but this time the example is a short use case. But that buildup is so smooth that I didn&#8217;t even realize it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Then I wondered how an author can write about a topic this deep with perfect examples. To find out I searched his name on the web and found out that he graduated with a Master of Science in Mathematics at the Stevens Institute of Technology and graduated in 1975. Petzold then wrote and published his first book, <em>&#8220;<a href=\"https:\/\/a.co\/d\/esiVqIY\">Programming Windows, Fifth Edition<\/a><\/em>&#8221;  in 2000, and one year later <a href=\"https:\/\/www.charlespetzold.com\/code\/\" data-type=\"URL\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.charlespetzold.com\/code\/\">&#8220;<em>Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Softwa<\/em>re&#8221;<\/a>. Petzold also has written tons of out-of-print books, mainly for Microsoft Windows. The experience of fiddling with computers and writing combined makes writing an easy-to-understand book a lot easier. He used all that experience to write an excellent book that will never become irrelevant even though things such as CRT TVs aren&#8217;t popular anymore. Also, the book follows the &#8220;Keep It Short And Simple&#8221; principle. <\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">That&#8217;s why I think if you want to learn how to code or are interested in computers, you should definitely read this book.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Thank you for reading, see you in another post.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full is-resized\"><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/keremgurevin.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/08\/indir.jpg\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-153\" width=\"839\" height=\"471\"\/><\/figure>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Hey you, yes you, the one looking at the screen. You wonder how things like communication and computers were invented and how they work but aren&#8217;t tech savvy? Well, this book is for you, my friend. Now if you wish, come with me to this not-very-deep rabbit hole, and let us see what kind of [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"iawp_total_views":20,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[40,41,39,42,44,43,45],"class_list":["post-280","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-book","tag-charles-petzold","tag-code","tag-code-book","tag-coding","tag-hard-ware","tag-microsoft","tag-software"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/keremgurevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/keremgurevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/keremgurevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keremgurevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keremgurevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=280"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/keremgurevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":422,"href":"https:\/\/keremgurevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/280\/revisions\/422"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/keremgurevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=280"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keremgurevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=280"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/keremgurevin.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=280"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}