Perhaps this is how you feel when you think about your computer. Even those of us that are intimately familiar with computer technology and use them to make a living often don't have any idea how computers actually do what they do. It is too easy to see the computer as a magic box that simply draws pictures on our monitor screen or that is a convenient way to spell check a term paper. Well, computers aren't magic. The modern computer is a solid combination of electrical engineering, mathematics, and hardware.
Computers do their job according to basic principles of physics and logic.
Someone just needs to come along and explain what those basic principles are. This is where Charles Petzold's book Code comes in. In 382 pages, Petzold moves the reader from the basic elements of computing machines to the modern GUI-based operating system. Petzold, a leading author of Microsoft programming manuals, removes the mystical shroud that we often give computers. He takes apart the basic components of a computer as you might take apart a 1969 Chevy in your garage.