Randall Hyde - Understanding the machine: Write Great Code, Volume 1

Todays programmers can hardly keep up with the race against inhumane deadlines and new technologies; therefore, they rarely have a chance to learn the basics of computer architectures and the inner workings of their programming languages. This book fills in the gaps. I strongly recommend it.
INFORMIT.COM

[Write Great Code] isnt your typical teach yourself to program book... Its relevant to all languages, and all levels of programming experience... Run, dont walk, to buy and read this book.
BAY AREA LARGE INSTALLATION SYSTEM ADMINISTRATORS (BAYLISA)

5/5 stars: [Write Great Code] fills in the blanks nicely and really could be part of a computer science degree required reading set.... Once this book is read, you will have a greater understanding and appreciation for code that is written efficientlyand you may just know enough to do that yourself. At least you will have a great start at the art of crafting efficient software.
MACCOMPANION

Great fun to read.
VSJ MAGAZINE

Write Great Code, Volume 1: Understanding the Machine should be on the required reading list for anyone who wants to develop terrific code in any language without having to learn assembly language.
WEBSERVERTALK

VOLUME 1

2ND EDITION

Understanding the Machine

by Randall Hyde

San Francisco

WRITE GREAT CODE, Volume 1: Understanding the Machine, 2nd Edition.
Copyright 2020 by Randall Hyde.

All rights reserved. No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage or retrieval system, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner and the publisher.

ISBN-10: 1-71850-036-X
ISBN-13: 978-1-71850-036-5

Publisher: William Pollock
Executive Editor: Barbara Yien
Production Editor: Rachel Monaghan
Developmental Editor: Athabasca Witschi
Project Editor: Dapinder Dosanjh
Cover and Interior Design: Octopod Studios
Technical Reviewer: Anthony Tribelli
Copyeditor: Rachel Monaghan
Compositor: Danielle Foster
Proofreader: James Fraleigh
Illustrator: David Van Ness

For information on distribution, translations, or bulk sales, please contact No Starch Press, Inc. directly:
No Starch Press, Inc.
245 8th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103
phone: 1.415.863.9900;
www.nostarch.com

The Library of Congress issued the following Cataloging-in-Publication Data for the first edition of Volume 1:

Hyde, Randall.
Write great code : understanding the machine / Randall Hyde.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-59327-003-8
1. Computer programming. 2. Computer architecture. I. Title.
QA76.6.H94 2004
005.1--dc22

2003017502

No Starch Press and the No Starch Press logo are registered trademarks of No Starch Press, Inc. Other product and company names mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their respective owners. Rather than use a trademark symbol with every occurrence of a trademarked name, we are using the names only in an editorial fashion and to the benefit of the trademark owner, with no intention of infringement of the trademark.

The information in this book is distributed on an As Is basis, without warranty. While every precaution has been taken in the preparation of this work, neither the author nor No Starch Press, Inc. shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in it.

Randall Hyde is the author of The Art of Assembly Language and Write Great Code, Volumes 1, 2, and 3 (all from No Starch Press), as well as Using 6502 Assembly Language and P-Source (Datamost). He is also the coauthor of Microsoft Macro Assembler 6.0 Bible (The Waite Group). Over the past 40 years, Hyde has worked as an embedded software/hardware engineer developing instrumentation for nuclear reactors, traffic control systems, and other consumer electronics devices. He has also taught computer science at California State Polytechnic University, Pomona, and at the University of California, Riverside. His website is www.randallhyde.com/.

Tony Tribelli has more than 35 years of experience in software development, including work on embedded device kernels and molecular modeling. He developed video games for 10 years at Blizzard Entertainment. He is currently a software development consultant and privately develops applications utilizing computer vision.

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW TO WRITE GREAT CODE

NUMERIC REPRESENTATION

BINARY ARITHMETIC AND BIT OPERATIONS

FLOATING-POINT REPRESENTATION

CHARACTER REPRESENTATION

MEMORY ORGANIZATION AND ACCESS

COMPOSITE DATA TYPES AND MEMORY OBJECTS

BOOLEAN LOGIC AND DIGITAL DESIGN

CPU ARCHITECTURE

INSTRUCTION SET ARCHITECTURE

MEMORY ARCHITECTURE AND ORGANIZATION

INPUT AND OUTPUT

COMPUTER PERIPHERAL BUSES

MASS STORAGE DEVICES AND FILESYSTEMS

MISCELLANEOUS INPUT AND OUTPUT DEVICES

A
ASCII CHARACTER SET

Many people have read and reread every word, symbol, and punctuation mark in this book in order to produce a better result. Kudos to the following people for their careful work on the second edition: development editor Athabasca Witschi, copyeditor/production editor Rachel Monaghan, and proofreader James Fraleigh.

I would like to take the opportunity to graciously thank Anthony Tribelli, a longtime friend, who went well beyond the call of duty when doing a technical review of this book. He pulled every line of code out of this book (including snippets) and compiled and ran it to make sure it worked properly. His suggestions and opinions throughout the technical review process have dramatically improved the quality of this work.

Of course, I would also like to thank all the countless readers over the years whove emailed suggestions and corrections, many of which have found their way into this second edition.

Thanks to all of you,
Randall Hyde

The Write Great Code (WGC) series will teach you how to write code you can be proud of; code that will impress other programmers, satisfy customers, and prove popular with users; and code that people (customers, your boss, and so on) wont mind paying top dollar to obtain. In general, the books in the series will discuss how to write software that achieves legendary status, eliciting the awe and admiration of other programmers.