Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, 2nd Edition

Chapter Twenty-Four

Loops, Jumps, and Calls

Our lives are full of repetition. We count the days through the natural rhythms of the rotation of the earth, the revolution of the moon around the earth, and of the earth around the sun. Each day is different, but our lives are often structured by standard routines that are similar from day to day.

In a sense, repetition is also the essence of computing. Nobody needs a computer to add two numbers together. (Let’s hope not, anyway!) But adding a thousand or a million numbers together? That’s a job for a computer.

This relationship of computing and repetition was obvious early on. In Ada Lovelace’s famous 1843 discussion of Charles Babbage’s Analytical Engine, she wrote:

1. Both for brevity and for distinctness, ...