Reviews for Commodore 64 LOGO

The average rating for Commodore 64 LOGO based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2017-01-03 00:00:00 CHARLES RICHIE I'll be honest. I only read this book because it was quoted as a must read by Joel Spolsky on a stackexchange answer about how to go about learning programming (and finding out if you want/should be a programmer). I was a little hesitant due to the year of release. Being at least some 11 years old that's a lot of time in the tech world. Ultimately though that doesn't matter. I defy any developer/programmer/system builder to read this book and not blitz through it lapping it up. Yes if you've done some schooling in computing or computer science you may be happy with much of the content but you'll surely find things you've either not thought about before in much depth or just wasn't explained in quite the elegant way that Petzold does. For me, whether it was due to age, experience or just maturity through both I found it filled gaps in my memory and indeed gaps in student course material. Petzold opens up the world of computing through a concise linear storytelling format. Starting with a basis in Morse Code and Braille through the telegraph system, barcodes, boolean logic, circuits with memory, von neumann machines, adding peripherals, I/O devices and GUI interfaces we just about catch up to the modern era with talk of HTTP and the world wide web. Having pretty much built the systems (or simplified versions of) we're discussing in the incremental circuit and systems diagrams on the way. Admittedly there's some rather 'of their time' phrases and facts that raise a smile (low resolutions, high costs for 'small' HD storage sizes, usage of cassette tapes by consumers) but this is all still valid information when taken in the context of the time of writing. If you are a Developer/Programmer you're not going to go into work having had an epiphany of how better to do things, but you may have a new found respect for what you're doing and the many, many ingenious shoulders you are standing upon.

Review # 2 was written on 2018-06-03 00:00:00 Ryan Hart My opinion on this book is really divided : on the one hand I enjoy some chapters, on the other hand I hardly managed to restrain myself from flipping through other chapters. Basically, this book designs and builds a basic computer by introducing in each chapter a concept or a technology used inside computers. It was written from 1987 to 1999, consequently one shouldn't expect any description of newest technologies. It starts really slowly with the first chapters, but then things get more and more complicated. One of the things that bother me with this book is the difference in complexity between chapters. Some chapters can be easily understood by a junior school or high school student while some of the latest chapters remind me bad memories of electronic circuits from my engineering school years. For example, a whole chapter is dedicated to explain how to communicate with your neighbour using a flashlight, an other chapter tackles the same issue with light bulbs and electrical wires, whereas all the gates or all the flip-flops are dealt with in a single chapter. I admit I have never been either fond of or good at electrokinetics, but I confess I didn't try to understand how all the electronic circuits of these later chapters work. I guess these chapters mostly interest hard code computer enthusiasts, but don't they already know these stuffs ? Besides, few chapters are a little boring : a whole chapter to describe every op-code of Intel 8080, come on ! Does the decimal system really deserve a whole chapter ? In my opinion, decimal and alternative number systems should have been presented in a single chapter instead of two. Moreover, the huge difference in complexity leads to some contradiction. The binary number system is so well described that a high school student can easily understand it, binary addition and subtraction are very detailed, but multiplication is done with a simple inefficient loop ! In my opinion, it would have been opportune to present at least a more efficient version based on the binary representation of the multiplicand as well as introduce exponentiation by squaring (a.k.a. square-and-multiply or binary exponentiation). Additionally, I think that Charles Petzold tries to explain in too many details how each part works so that readers with less technical knowledge can understand, but in the end I guess these readers get lost or confused by so many details anyway, whereas a few technical references are missing. For instance, both Von Neumann and Harvard architectures are described but I don't recall them being mentioned. Nevertheless, I really liked when the author gives historical anecdotes or references. The chapters I enjoyed the most are the ones where Charles Petzold gives readers some background history to introduce a concept or technology (for instance, Morse and Braille's codes, Bell's telegraph, the invention of telegraph relays, the evolution of transistors, chips or programming languages). Eventually, I find it a bit contradictory for this book that most of the interesting chapters are the less technical ones indeed. Moreover, due to the important difference of knowledge required to understand chapters, I don't think someone may understand or find interesting every chapter.