Top all-time · #518
Charles Petzold
Personal blog · charlespetzold.comprogrammingwritinghistory
Charles Petzold's personal blog at charlespetzold.com covers programming, writing and history. Since 2008, 113 different Hacker News readers have linked it 186 times, most often “Code: The Language of Computer Hardware and Software”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2026-09-03, and you can follow it by feed.
Often recommended · 18 of 40 sampled comments recommend it?
Why HN links it
HN readers link charlespetzold.com mainly for his book "Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software", recommended for learning how computers work from the ground up. The blog and his other writing are valued for history, the Windows API and programming.
- Recommended for · 18 comments
- Commenters call the writing excellent and a great read, and one praises his writing style and says every sentence is carefully chosen. Several recommend his boo
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 40 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Charles Petzold is the author of the books Code and The Annotated Turing
Most-linked posts?
- Code: The Language of Computer Hardware and Software19 people · 26 mentions · first linked 2011-04-17
- Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind? (2005)9 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2011-12-23
- Do modern IDEs make us dumber?8 people · 11 mentions · first linked 2008-05-01
- The Infamous Windows “Hello World” Program4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2014-12-09
- Windows 1.0 and the Applications of Tomorrow (2005)3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-01-25
- Password Math3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2025-02-08
- De-Obfuscating the Statistics of Mass Shootings3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2015-07-05
- Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2010-11-24
- /blog/2022/06/Announcing-Code-2nd-Edition.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-08-07
- Hard Work, No Pay: What's the Point?2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-04-30
What Hacker News says?
Seconded - it's fabulous to find that not only is he writing, but writing posts with titles like: http://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2021/08/Screw-You-Microso... no M$-lapdog, he. I learnt my Win16 from the first edition of "Programming Windows" and would have learnt my modern UI from the newest edition if MS hadn't been so busy throwing the bathwater out with the Windows Phone baby that I lost heart.
Comment linking /blog/2021/08/Screw-You-Microsoft-Edge.html
on ““Code” 2nd Edition”Submitted “Code” 2nd Edition as a story · 1036 points
HN discussion> However, after making my way through But How Do It Know? by J. Clark Scott, a book which describes the bits of a simple 8-bit computer from the NAND gates, through to the registers, RAM, bits of the CPU, ALU and I/O, I got a hankering to implement it in code. Speaking of code, another excellent book along these lines is Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold. http://www.char…
Comment linking /code/
on “I don't know how CPUs work so I simulated one in code”Submitted “Code” 2nd Edition Now Available as a story · 525 points
HN discussionOn a similar topic but a bit less project oriented: Charles Petzolds "CODE The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software" http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/
Comment linking /code/
on “Ask HN: What are some books where the reader learns by building one project?”Submitted Screw You, Microsoft Edge as a story · 304 points
HN discussionFor a more accessible yet also very comprehensive book, see Petzold's Code: http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/
Comment linking /code/
on “NandGame – Build a Computer from Scratch”Submitted Very Wrong Math as a story · 192 points
HN discussionThis was really seeded for me when trying to teach people taking computer science courses who were trying to do practical things like integrate C libraries into their higher level projects, but didn't really understand how things were working under the hood and getting themselves into a mess. If they understood a little more about how their program was built and run ... from the bottom up, as it were :) ... they wou…
Comment linking /code/index.html
on “Computer Science from the Bottom Up (2016)”Submitted De-Obfuscating the Statistics of Mass Shootings as a story · 188 points
HN discussionIt's very similar to Charles Petzold's "CODE" book. An excellent read. http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/
Comment linking /code/
on “Simple CPU”Submitted Retirement and Realignment as a story · 144 points
HN discussionhttps://www.charlespetzold.com/PetzoldTattoo.jpg
Comment linking /PetzoldTattoo.jpg
on “The Lost Art of Logarithms”Submitted Can guitar frets perform multiplication? as a story · 140 points
HN discussionThere's not much detail, here, but it gives the gist: https://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2022/06/Announcing-Code-...
Comment linking /blog/2022/06/Announcing-Code-2nd-Edition.html
on ““Code” 2nd Edition Now Available”Submitted The Infamous Windows “Hello World” Program as a story · 134 points
HN discussionSounds amazing. Big fan of his writing style, have two of his books: "Code" and "The Annotated Turing". I'd be curious to learn about his work habits - have they changed over the years? Has he experienced any procrastination during his career and how he dealt with it? Any advice to those who got bored by the challenges of the modern software industry? Only now I found that he has a blog, so it looks like I've got so…
Comment linking /blog/toc.html
on ““Code” 2nd Edition Now Available”Submitted The Changes for the 2nd Edition of “Code” as a story · 125 points
HN discussionReally useful, thank you! I had saved this post of John Resig's from 10 years ago (!), which also gives some numbers: https://johnresig.com/blog/programming-book-profits/ (I'm not sure if my expectation is reasonable, but I would have thought that a book the most popular JS framework author would have sold more / made more in profit.) I know you said you weren't planning to write another book, but I wonder if in ret…
Comment linking /blog/2007/10/081247.html
on “The Economics of Writing a Technical Book”Submitted Windows 1.0 and the Applications of Tomorrow (2005) as a story · 125 points
HN discussionNone of this rings true to me. I've never heard or read anything like "it wasn't the perpetrator's fault, it was XYZ", but rather "it was the perpetrator's fault, and I wonder if XYZ contributes to the prevalence of such perpetrators". In the US at least, there certainly appears to be something going on outside of random happenstance[0], so it makes sense to think and talk about what that may be. Certainly many peop…
Comment linking /blog/2015/07/De-Obfuscating-the-Statistics-of-Mass-Shootings.html
on “Code Specialists Oppose U.S. and British Access to Encrypted Communication”Submitted Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind? (2005) as a story · 108 points
HN discussionThere are some disadvantages, though. If you're looking at WinForms or VB UI with two buttons, e.g. yes/no, there are things you can't easily and naturally see at a glance. * What's the tab order? (Usually whatever order they happened to be created in, which is often wrong after the UI has gone through some changes.) * Are they really exactly the same size or only almost the same? * How do they behave when the windo…
Comment linking /etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html
on “Guietta – Python module to create simple GUIs”Submitted Does Visual Studio rot the mind? (2005) as a story · 105 points
HN discussionCould you draw overlapping things without repainting using 1985 technology? That is, an IBM PC running at 4.77 MHz; with 128 KB of ram (or 640 KB if you're lucky). The OS would have been dos at something like version 2.x Some people[1] used Wordstar as their text editor. You had limited multitasking -- TSRs maybe. I'm not sure what programming language they used but possibly Microsoft C and assembly. [1] http://www.…
Comment linking /etc/windows1/
on “What Microsoft is this the Altair Basic of?”Submitted Does Visual Studio rot the mind? (2005) as a story · 98 points
HN discussionFor "How does the computer really work?" questions, I recommend this book: http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/
Comment linking /code/
on “A fundamental introduction to x86 assembly programming”Submitted I, Health Insurer as a story · 87 points
HN discussionRelated classic rant: "Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind? Ruminations on the Psychology and Aesthetics of Coding" http://charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.htm...
Comment linking /etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html
on “Don't Make Students Use Eclipse”Submitted The Mary Queen of Scots Channel Anamorphosis: A 3D Simulation as a story · 80 points
HN discussion
