December 2014
Beginner
384 pages
12h 52m
English
book
How Computers Work: The Evolution of Technology, Tenth Edition
by Ron White, Timothy Edward Downs
Content preview from How Computers Work: The Evolution of Technology, Tenth Edition
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O’Reilly covers everything we've got, with content to help us build a world-class technology community, upgrade the capabilities and competencies of our teams, and improve overall team performance as well as their engagement.I wanted to learn C and C++, but it didn't click for me until I picked up an O'Reilly book. When I went on the O’Reilly platform, I was astonished to find all the books there, plus live events and sandboxes so you could play around with the technology.I’ve been on the O’Reilly platform for more than eight years. I use a couple of learning platforms, but I'm on O'Reilly more than anybody else. When you're there, you start learning. I'm never disappointed.I'm always learning. So when I got on to O'Reilly, I was like a kid in a candy store. There are playlists. There are answers. There's on-demand training. It's worth its weight in gold, in terms of what it allows me to do.
Chapter 2. How Computers Remember
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary, and those who don’t.
—Programmer’s joke
It doesn’t make any difference if your electronic device of choice is a desktop computer, laptop, camera, smartphone, tablet, or glasses. Even if their functions wildly differ, all devices work using the same fundamental foundation of computing, the transistor.
The transistor—the basic building block from which all microchips are built—has an unsubtle way of handling information: binary. It has two choices; nothing in between. If current passes through a transistor, the transistor stands for a 1, or ...
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