About Mal

This is a wonderful bottom-up introduction to computers and how they work. Rather than starting with a high-level, dynamically-typed language like Python or JavaScript, this book starts by talking about Morse code. It introduces the concept of encoding and transmitting information in various ways and gives a simple overview of electric circuits and how they work. After this point you'll become familiar with the basics of Boolean logic and learn how we can encode complex logical expressions into electric circuits by constructing logic gates from physical components such as switches and transistors. Eventually you'll have walked through the construction of a very simple CPU and how it's able to read and execute software instructions from RAM.

I had a blast reading this book. It's 480 pages and I think I read it in about a week, though if you pace yourself (unlike I did) it could take about a month, especially if this is your first foray into computer architecture. There are few errors (one notable one is an example of a logical AND or OR operation that is mislabeled) and the writing style is fairly easy to follow. Chapters 19 through 23 or 24 walk through the creation of a CPU and are easily the densest and most difficult chapters in the book, so if you can get through those you'll be in a very good place if you want to delve deeper into computers.

If you know someone who is interested in learning about computers or computer science this book makes a great gift.

This book is all about -- you guessed it -- modern operating systems (or at least what was considered modern as of 2014), the software that directly manages hardware components and provides a set of abstract interfaces for programmers and users to utilize. Most chapters introduce and delve deep into a single core function of an operating system: memory management, file systems, I/O, and processes, to name a few. You'll learn about the history behind each, the hardware that enables it, and the software that runs it. Further, there are two case studies focused on Linux and Windows 8, respectively, near the end of the book that provide concrete examples of the theory introduced prior.

This is just a straight up textbook, so it's a harder read than Code: Hidden Language. It's also massive, sitting at 1027 pages excluding the bibliography and index. There aren't any errors in the book that I've noticed aside from some minor typos, though the authors occasionally structure their sentences in weird ways which can make some parts difficult to understand.

I started reading this book immediately after I finished Code: Hidden Language and I believe the latter provides a decent foundation for being able to understand most of what is discussed. Having some knowledge of C and assembly code will help immensely since operating systems and device drivers have to interface with hardware components at the lowest levels.

A free online copy of the book can be found here.

When most people talk about DOOM's engine, they like to discuss how it renders graphics. More specifically, they like to talk about binary space partitioning (BSP) and, perhaps to a lesser extent, diminished lighting. While both of these are impressive, especially given the hardware of the time, they're definitely not the full story.

This book gives an overview of the engine as a whole rather than just its graphics pipeline. Not only does this talk about details of the engine itself, but it also walks through the hardware of the time such as the NeXT computers on which DOOM was developed as well as the history of the game's ports to various platforms and the challenges that came with them.