It is a fantastic book. It doesn't take u into typical algorithms (at least that I recall), but rather it explains as intuitively as possible how a computer is built up from flip flops and binary logic to assembly, intermediate language and on to full-on compilation of a useable language. Basically beginner programmers can acquire a broad understanding of the foundation the programs you're building are built on by reading this book. It reads more like a non-fiction expose than a programming language tutorial book, which is to say, given its subject, it's an easy read you can do on the couch.…
pg, thanks for bringing this up! It's actually a really dense topic, and there are a bunch of ways to look at it. Having done an increasing amount of public speaking over the last few years, I can say from experience that there are a lot of dynamics at play. I think you are absolutely correct, prewritten speeches, even if memorized, rarely translate well into a live speech. They usually come off as either forced, too structured, and feel like a movie that's been hastily adapted from a book. There's a reason for the saying "it's 10 percent what you say and 90 percent how you say it." Written…
For "how things work", I recommend the book Code by Charles Petzold. After that, Jon Stokes's Inside the Machine will give a lot of details on CPU architectures up to Intel's Core 2 Duo. You can also try following along a computer engineering book if you want to go that low in detail with exercises, Digital Fundamentals by Floyd is a common textbook (I have an old 8th edition). History-wise, enjoy learning slowly because there's so much that even if you dedicated yourself to it you wouldn't be "done" any time soon! Some suggestions in order though: Watching The Mother of All Demos:…
I would really like to try writing something along the lines of “the web from scratch” one day. I wouldn’t want it to be just a retelling of the history of the internet, but rather building up a set of abstractions from some physical example of communication to your own mental model of a hypertext standard on top of a simple transport protocol, sort of like Charles Petzold’s Code. The web is complex nowadays, but it also actively hides its implementation from you to be a better product. Dialing a phone number with a modem on both ends has a sort of real tactility to it that’s pretty alien to…
I want to echo the suggestion that several others have made, to start with a good book on just about any programming language that has a lot of sample programs in it, and learn to read that code and execute it with pencil and paper. This will be much more productive than trying to learn to write code from scratch while also learning a language and learning how to execute the code with pencil and paper. I would start by going through the exercise yourself: pick out a book and use one of the first sample programs, and set up a "debugger" on a pad of paper. I used to do this kind of debugging…
This is a lovely ode to the period in which I developed my love for computers. Although like many growing up east of the Atlantic Ocean, my computer of choice was the Sinclair ZX Spectrum. Without the budget to afford to buy much in the way of cassette-based professional software, like most I resorted to manually entering programs from magazines like Sinclair User[1] and Personal Computer World[2], which got me into the habit of reading others' code. When they were inevitably incorrectly entered, I was introduced to debugging techniques for the first time. After a while, I figured that I…
I'm not really sure where i stand on this - as someone in the throws of self teaching programming (C) - and consider myself pretty smart. I've attempted learning on my own several times. Many times since 2016 and have given up on many occasions. CS50x is one of the first pieces of material which has close to what i consider sane pedagogy. I go back and forth between thinking Python is better for learning because "hey, less typing, less curly braces". Then thinking - great i dont know wtf is happening here - just magic i guess?? (refer XCXD comic). I have seen this many times in relation…
I highly recommend Charles Petzold's 'Code'. I originally bought it for my father, but soon ended up reading it myself cover to cover. It fills a lot of blanks in in my understanding; blanks that were also glossed over in my education as well (Waterloo CS & C&O, 2002). The book starts from the most basic 'switch and a lightbulb' circuit, and takes a stepwise approach that ends up disassembling x86 by the final chapters. Although it can be a little pandering in points, and the rigour certainly isn't there (I can't remember for certain, but I'm pretty sure it violates my 'must have…
Code by Charles Petzold will feel a bit slow at the beginning but gets pretty fun once he gets to circuits and builds up a whole functioning computer. Hackers by Steven Levy is a great history of the 50s to 80s. Very focused on the personalities of the non-establishment people who made things happen. Go To by Steve Lohr is also a history and super boring. Give it a pass. The Mythical Man-Month by Frederick Brooks--if you haven't read this yet, it's pretty light, and it's amazing how contemporary it feels. Programmers at Work by Susan Lammers: interviews of lots of famous computer…
> Intro articles like this do a lot to reveal biases and misunderstandings. This is one of the reasons I barely recommend any intro articles in Lean Notes (http://www.leannotes.com/): almost every single one is just a stream of incomplete and incorrect statements about how the world works, based on the author's myopic personal experiences. Rather than properly generalizing and consolidating what needs to be said to convey a full understanding of the topic, most intros settle for the first example they can think of that could be remotely construed as related to the words they've previously…