August 15, 2023
This book is interesting for those who're looking for a high-level historical overview of how we ended up having the computers we have today. It's an easy book to read in the beginning, but it quickly becomes harder as multiple concepts start to pack up.
It starts with very basic examples teaching the reader how a simple circuit with a lamp works. It then uses this knowledge to build a small summation circuit, and to then evolve it into a more sophisticated (yet basic) computer.
The way the author presents the information is in a linear history-telling way. This made it easier for me to follow what is presented as an information evolution of transmitting simple signals through copper wires (a telegraph) to interacting with complex signals the way we do today.
Each chapter of the book introduces a concept. On a high-level it goes like this:
I feel a bit more appreciation for the computer engineering field after reading this book. No, it didn't make me a better developer directly, but it has satiated some of my curiosity on the topic :-)
One thing that wasn't great was that the author rushed at the end. This is a bit of a shame, because we're very high level at that point, so taking a few pages to go deeper into the content would have made a lot of sense.