Charles Petzold
Charles Petzold
Charles Petzoldis an American programmer and technical author on Microsoft Windows applications. He is also a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional and was named one of Microsoft's seven Windows Pioneers...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionBusinessman
Date of Birth2 February 1953
CountryUnited States of America
book technology color
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.
operating-systems programmers defined
To a programmer, an operating system is defined by its API.
space causes filling
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
design lazy aversion
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
color decision pixels
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.
machines language assembly
I started out with machine code and assembly language.
lunch free-lunch
Free lunches don't come cheap.
machines eating programming
Programming in machine code is like eating with a toothpick
environment window judgment
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.
instrument means midi note time
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.
contains electronic file midi music notes particular player roll series type
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.
explore figuring liked various version work
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.
choices
You probably don't have much of a choice.
memories microsoft corporations
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