The Book That Every Programmer Should Read

No, it’s not Knuth’s “The Art of Programming”. I’m talking about quite an easy-to-read (compared to TAoP) book, which, in fact, does not require any engineering or mathematical background from the reader.

I am talking about C. Petzold’s “CODE”. It is a truly remarkable book about how computers work. Let me explain why I think this book is so awesome.

The book starts from the very beginning, from explaining what code is, bringing several examples, like Morse code and Braille’s system. It then goes on to explain how electricity works and how it can be used to represent information with binary codes.

In later chapters, Boolean algebra is explained and the author shows us how to build basic components of circuits (logic gates) with battery, wires and simple relays. Those are used later to build an 8-bit adder circuit and a RAM array. Eventually, the author describes a computer with a simple instruction set and random-access memory.

This book is so amazing because it shows how simple principles can be combined to create the basis of the complex modern technology. You should read it to (at least approximately) understand what really goes on behind all the loops, pointers, variables, jumps and complex data structures. It won’t give you insights about the inner workings of Intel’s processors, but you will understand the basic things which make that pile of plastic and metal do math, display pretty moving pictures and download pr0n from the internets. Which is very important.

P.S.

During my second year at the university we were taught a course which was called “Computer Architecture”. What we really did during that course can be summarized as (painful) memorization of 8086′s instructions and writing a few programs in freaking Turbo Assembler (the year was 2008, by the way).

If only instead of all that crap we were taught what was written in Petzold’s book, it would’ve been one of the most useful courses ever, because:

• It would really be about computer architecture and not about memorizing instructions or writing programs for a painfully outdated compiler;
• I would actually learn something.

That is all.