NOP stands for (and is pronounced) no op, as in no operation. The NOP causes the processor to do absolutely nothing. What's it good for? Filling spac…

- Charles Petzold

To a programmer, an operating system is defined by its API.

- Charles Petzold

Free lunches don't come cheap.

- Charles Petzold

In some far-off distant time, when the twentieth century history of primitive computing is just a murky memory, someone is likely to suppose that dev…

- Charles Petzold

Computer monitors can operate in many different video modes. In most cases, the decision about how many pixels and colors to display is yours - but n…

- Charles Petzold

Code is not like other how-computers-work books. It doesn't have big color illustrations of disk drives with arrows showing how the data sweeps into …

- Charles Petzold

Programming in machine code is like eating with a toothpick

- Charles Petzold

The human species is often amazingly inventive and industrious but at the same time profoundly lazy. It's very clear that we humans don't like to wor…

- Charles Petzold

You probably don't have much of a choice.

- Charles Petzold