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How To Count (Programming For Mere Mortals, #1) (2000)

by Steven Frank(Favorite Author)

3.97 of 5 Votes: 3

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English

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review 1: Good companion read. It is intended as one of many books in a series, but there is no sign of the other books to come.I'm in the process of an immersion of all things "software construction". Coming from a business and design background, I find the need to immerse my self in the engineering aspects in order to grok the computer / software stack.This book is good quick companion to other readings. It is a nibblet. I read 'How to Count' as a breather after completing the first 1/3 of Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software. That would probably be the approach I recommend to others. It explains basic binary math but doesn't explain why this information will be useful to you in the future (and the author is quick to remind us, you don't actually need to kno... morew this in order to program your first app).This book on its own does not provide enough detail to be useful, its a good companion explanation but it is essentially a bridge without a connecting road.Perhaps when the author publishes additional books in the series it will have stronger merits.
review 2: Steve Frank’s motivation for writing the book is compelling. Contemporary software products are built on top of layers of technology, both hardware and software. For someone interested in starting to write software, or even understand computing better, working with the level of abstraction offered by contemporary tools can feel like learning the mechanics and missing the fundamentals. Like being expected to do calculus after not getting algebra. "Learning to code" is today’s buzzword. I see books offering help in that effort everywhere. Understanding principles, however, is a job too often left to degree programs. If you stick with my mathematics analogy, this books is about the arithmetic of the computing stack. Looking to understand how is it that computers store information? What’s the difference between a Megabyte and Mebibyte? Megabits per second vs Megabytes per second? This is the book. I appreciate Steve’s writing style. It’s got the lightness of linguistic touch and avoids forced humor. It simplifies the tangentials to clarify the essence. If you know of a good book that deals with with subsequent layers of the computing stack in a manner in which "How to Count" deals with the first, let me know! Steve, I can’t wait until you write one. less

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