The Changes for the 2nd Edition of “Code”

Same thing is true for Mathematics.

I think you can generalize this problem to just about any subject, or any kind of story telling. e.g. Herodotus' Histories has these digressions (I've sometimes seen them called 'pendants', which I really like), which can also be nested. i.e. time is not mapped linearly to the text, the text jumps around in time (and space) to provide context to the main narrative (and sometimes to provide context to the context). Digressions also appear in Homer.

So you can think of the story elements as a kind of graph that have to be flattened into a linear structure, and to perform this flattening well is the art of good story-telling.

I think I accidentally got a good order because of the ad hoc learning I did as a child. I first encountered Commodore/Apple II/IBM through text-mode games/Wordperfect/typing programs in from magazines, then > learned C which gave me an idea of how they worked > learned microcontrollers then understood how the keyboard and monitor worked and how to drive things like that > then logic, electronics and transistors to figure out how microcontrollers worked (and how to make sense of digital voltages) > finally the D-latch.

I do have to admit I had a multiuser OS sized hole for a while. The computers in my head were Harvard architecture RISC, generally programmed in assembly, and were driving pin voltages. But it was close enough.

So an accidental process of being introduced to things as black boxes, then opening the black boxes. Still linear, but backwards. Needless to say, I loved Code when it came out and gave away at least four copies. I would tell people who thought I knew a lot about computers "this book contains pretty much everything I know about computers."

I actually think computing lends itself well to that because it is built in layers. You can talk about how a layer behaves before talking about how it was made to behave that way. The problem I think people run into is that some come to think lower levels of abstraction are a waste of time from a combination of pragmatism ("I don't care how it works") and sour-grapesism ("I don't know how it works so it doesn't matter.")

Check out Computer Networks From Scratch by Seth Archer Brown (work in progress). Once finished, could be considered a Code Volume 2.

https://www.networksfromscratch.com/table_of_contents.html

Stevens' books are well-regarded:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TCP/IP_Illustrated

I'm enjoying his Unix book now. (Although these are little more technical and not as oriented to lay-people.)

It's very possible. Code is a fantastic book for people who want to understand how computers work, basically from first principles.

I think it'd be great. It a great way of building knowledge until someone is able to understand how a computer works. It's very approachable and requires next to no preexisting knowledge.

Yes. This is one of the greates book and overview for computer science. It's well written and deep enough not to be trivial, but not too deep to be boring or homeworkesq.

"Code" should be made mandatory reading for every "educated" individual.

It is often frustrating to meet otherwise intelligent people who have the most outlandish ideas of "What a Computer IS" and "How it Works". The invention of the Computer was truly a Quantum leap in Human Civilization. Today the World literally is run by Computers and it is most important that everybody gets the proper idea of what this "Machine" is with its Capabilities/Limits.

It is the closest I've ever come to what I imagine it is like to be a wizard and learn magic from first principles.

Every kid is different but I'd say a 5th grader would be fine

I'm reading it to my nine year-old, a chapter at a time. He is likely technically capable of reading it himself but he doesn't have the focus to get through more than a page or two on his own. But he likes spending time with me no matter what we're doing and he is having no problem understanding the concepts in the first few chapters so far. He particularly loves (re-)inventing practical applications for the concepts being introduced, like the flashlight telegraph.

Some parts of this book could be read/shown to a 5-year-old. We're talking simple battery-to-switch-to-lightbulb wiring diagrams, colored in red when the wires/bulbs have power (quite a nice touch when showing this to those new to the subject). This methodology continues in the sections on logic gates so you can clearly tell what line has a logic one for instance, causing a bulb to light up. The book is awash in plentiful diagrams that range from very simple to fairly complex. The complexity seems to be hinged carefully on relevent predecessor diagrams, so nothing out-of-the-blue is thrown at the reader.

You may find the following useful;

1) Internet System Handbook by Daniel Lynch and Marshall Rose - Classic oldie laying out the protocol foundations of the Internet.

2) Internet Architectures by Daniel Minoli and Andrew Schmidt - Another oldie laying out the operational framework of the Internet.

3) The Intelligent Web: Search, smart algorithms, and big data by Gautam Shroff - This is the closest to what you are looking for. For most people the Internet has become synonymous with the Applications (explicit or implicit) running on the Web and hence this book focuses on its current state and future possibilities.

Updated a few references, added a lot more about how one would create a processor from the parts he already described.

I'd say no, you wouldn't miss anything important.

Looks like not much:

- A story about a "Tony Orlando and Dawn" song illustrating binary signaling.

- Picture implying electrons orbit nuclei like planets as out of favor.

- Implied removal of Motorola 6800 info, in favor of more Intel 8080, though I haven't confirmed.

- Reference to camera film.

- Chapter fawning over Windows cut down (Thank $diety. Or was that MMM?)

maybe, I read some discussion about it and someone suggested something like reading Code and seeing if it's interesting then partaking in nand2tetris. Also nand2tetris actually makes you implement everything yourself.

Chapter 6 forward corresponds well to nand2tetris, but, yes, at a higher level (it doesn't offer a project or homework). The first 5 chapters are probably the lightest portions in Code and offer historical and motivational reasons to explore code (as a general concept). 6 is where binary logic really starts, and then the later chapters build out a CPU.

If the goal were to use these two materials to develop an understanding of computers and digital logic, probably the most natural combination would be to read all of Code and then do nand2tetris, or to read the first few chapters of Code and then finish it while doing the first half of the nand2tetris course. Code's in depth material corresponds most strongly to the hardware portion of nand2tetris.