Code is not like other how-computers-work books. It doesn't have big color illustrations of disk drives with arrows showing how the data sweeps into the computer. Code has no drawings of trains carrying a cargo of zeros and ones. Metaphors and similes are wonderful literary devices but they do nothing but obscure the beauty of technology.

Charles Petzold

Categorized in : Book Technology Illustration

I felt more like a scientist exploring nature, and Windows was my environment. You dont pass judgment on nature; you just explain how it works.

Charles Petzold

judgment environment window

Owning a computer without programming is like having a kitchen and using only the microwave oven

Charles Petzold

ovens kitchen computer

Programming in machine code is like eating with a toothpick

Charles Petzold

programming machines eating

Free lunches don't come cheap.

Charles Petzold

free-lunch lunch

I started out with machine code and assembly language.

Charles Petzold

assembly machines language

Computer monitors can operate in many different video modes. In most cases, the decision about how many pixels and colors to display is yours - but not always.

Charles Petzold

color different decision

You probably don't have much of a choice.

Charles Petzold

choices

The human species is often amazingly inventive and industrious but at the same time profoundly lazy. It's very clear that we humans don't like to work. This aversion to work is so extreme - and our ingenuity so acute - that we're eager to devote countless hours designing and building devices that might shave a few minutes off our workday

Charles Petzold

aversion lazy design

In some far-off distant time, when the twentieth century history of primitive computing is just a murky memory, someone is likely to suppose that devices known as logic gates were named after the famous co-founder of Microsoft Corporation

Charles Petzold

corporations microsoft memories

NOP stands for (and is pronounced) no op, as in no operation. The NOP causes the processor to do absolutely nothing. What's it good for? Filling space. The 8080 can usually execute a bunch of NOP instructions without anything bad happening

Charles Petzold

causes space instruction

To a programmer, an operating system is defined by its API.

Charles Petzold

operating-systems programmers defined

I really liked figuring things out on my own. Early on in the development of a new version of Windows, I would explore it, I would try out various things, I would see what worked, I would see what didn't work.

Charles Petzold

new see my-own work

Blend is great for designers because it implements a lot of sophisticated behaviours, but for what I like to do, hand coding XAML is preferable, particularly because I have to publish it.

Charles Petzold

hand because great like

Some programs - especially games - require that your system be set to a particular color depth and resolution. Often such special settings are different from your usual mode, though.

Charles Petzold

your color different special

A MIDI file contains coded instructions to play a particular series of notes on an electronic music synthesizer. A MIDI file is more like a piano roll in a player piano than any type of sound recording.

Charles Petzold

like music sound play

All modern MIDI synthesizers are capable of polyphony, which means they can play more than one note at a time and more than one instrument at a time.

Charles Petzold

more capable play time

MIDI made a natural transition to the PC. The MIDI messages that make up a musical composition can be saved as MIDI files, which are collections of MIDI messages with timing information.

Charles Petzold

make timing information natural

Many MIDI files contain entire musical compositions. Because MIDI supports only 16 channels, however, no more than 16 different instruments can play at any time, and one of those is the key-based percussion instrument.

Charles Petzold

more different play time