Charles Petzold
charlespetzold.com · Personal blog · on HN since 2008
Charles Petzold, author of 'Code' and 'Programming Windows', writes about programming, Windows development and computing history.
What HN saysHN commenters treat his books as authoritative, especially Programming Windows for Win32, and link his essay 'Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind?'.
112HN people shared it
61linked it in comments
107stories submitted
3.9Kstory points
5 months agolast shared
2008people per year2026
Most-shared posts
- 1Code: The Language of Computer Hardware and Software20 people · 6 points · first shared 2011 · discussion on HN
- 2Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind? (2005)18 people · 355 points · first shared 2008 · 143 comments on HN
- 3The Infamous Windows “Hello World” Program4 people · 135 points · first shared 2014 · 89 comments on HN
- 4“Code” 2nd Edition3 people · 1.0K points · first shared 2022 · 171 comments on HN
- 5De-Obfuscating the Statistics of Mass Shootings3 people · 188 points · first shared 2015 · 166 comments on HN
- 6Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software3 people · 23 points · first shared 2010 · 6 comments on HN
- 7Password Math3 people · 6 points · first shared 2025 · discussion on HN
- 8“Windows 1.0 and the Applications of *Tomorrow*” keynote, Charles Petzold (2005)3 people · 4 points · first shared 2013 · discussion on HN
- 9Windows 1.0 and the Applications of Tomorrow (2005)3 people · 3 points · first shared 2015 · discussion on HN
- 10Code the Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software (2nd edition)3 people · 1 points · first shared 2018 · discussion on HN
- 11Screw You, Microsoft Edge2 people · 304 points · first shared 2021 · 154 comments on HN
- 12The Mary Queen of Scots Channel Anamorphosis: A 3D Simulation2 people · 91 points · first shared 2025 · 14 comments on HN
- 13The Appalling Stupidity of Spotify's AI DJ2 people · 4 points · first shared 2026 · 1 comments on HN
- 14Reading “Humanly Possible”2 people · 3 points · first shared 2023 · discussion on HN
- 1530 Years2 people · 2 points · first shared 2026 · discussion on HN
What HN people wrote when they linked it
anarticle · 2026-04-06
Programming Windows is THE authoritative source on Win32 programming:
https://www.charlespetzold.com/books.html
It is a fantastic book, I learned everything I know on Win32 from it. Wrote real time scientific software in windows for ~10y! We did it all, external hardware control, custom UIs, etc. Thanks Ryan Geiss for your timing info.
Right about VC6 was the sweet spot imo, C/C++ with lightning fast UI for docs and more. Tools got out of the way. Once other languages got involved (C#?) the docs got out of control and harder to use, and the UI started to get a little overloaded.
The snappiness of those old windows systems was pretty great.
skripp · 2023-08-07
The three books I recommend are these:
{0,1,2}. The first two are best read together and maybe sprinkle in a bit of [2]. If you are on Linux or Mac then the last one obviously has to be substituted for something else.
[0] https://deitel.com/c-how-to-program-8-e/
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Code:_The_Hidden_Language_of_Computer_Ha…
[2] http://www.charlespetzold.com/pw5/
mschaef · 2023-07-19
Even VB1 was near miraculous for the time. It catches a lot of flack, but VB took Windows programming (which formerly required knowledge of C, $600 worth of tooling, and a multi-step build process) and made it a $99.99 drag/drop affair.
Charles Petzold's comments on "Hello World" in early Windows give a bit of a flavor of what Windows programming was like prior to VB.
http://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2014/12/The-Infamous-Windows-Hello-…
softwaredoug · 2023-02-10
Reminds me of this classic article from Petzold wondering the same about intellisense
“Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind?”
http://www.charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html
abudabi123 · 2022-12-04
You might like a book by Charles Petzold. Here is one [1].
Your better option is to follow an open courseware program on Operating System by a reputable institution with a track record such as MIT or CMU.
Maybe IBM has online selfstudy resources.
I don't know if it is too late in the boot process for you looking at the results from a search on the terms "arm nxp device tree boot"
[1] https://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/2022/06/Announcing-Code-2nd-Editio…
sempron64 · 2022-08-08
The most important book in my opinion for post-apocalyptic programming is Charles Petzold’s Code https://www.charlespetzold.com/code/
It details how to build a working computer starting from relays. The greatest moment for me as a teenager reading this book was figuring out how a flip flop worked. Having information stored in a dynamic system’s state seemed like the most magical thing I had ever seen.
archielc · 2022-08-07
Sounds amazing. Big fan of his writing style, have two of his books: "Code" and "The Annotated Turing".
I'd be curious to learn about his work habits - have they changed over the years? Has he experienced any procrastination during his career and how he dealt with it? Any advice to those who got bored by the challenges of the modern software industry?
Only now I found that he has a blog, so it looks like I've got some new reading material: https://www.charlespetzold.com/blog/toc.html
SkyMarshal · 2022-04-22
Code, by Charles Petzold: http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/
Explains how we got from Boolean logic to microchips and software.
Also, the Computer History Museum in Silicon Valley has an excellent exhibit containing both early computing devices and the seminal papers that were the precursors and enablers of modern computers: https://www.computerhistory.org/revolution/; https://computerhistory.org/timelines/;
smitty1e · 2020-04-11
Related classic rant:
"Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind? Ruminations on the Psychology and Aesthetics of Coding"
http://charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html
fossuser · 2019-10-23
I'd recommend Charles Petzold's Code: http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/
Which does a great job building up computing from bits all the way to a adders, CPUs, and assembly language (with the historical background around it too).
I think the easiest way to get an idea for Quantum Computing and what the difference is comes from watching a specific example, I thought this example of Shor's algorithm was pretty good: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wUwZZaI5u0c
ArtWomb · 2019-06-27
The academic CS tomes never really gelled for me. It was .NET programmer Charles Petzold's guides that made things click
http://www.charlespetzold.com/books.html
I'd also give a shout out to Micheal Abrash's Graphics Programming Black Book that taught me the adage "the best optimizer is between your ears"
http://www.jagregory.com/abrash-black-book/
Reference I keep close at hand is Ilya Grigorik's High Performance Browser Networking. Web apps with sub second latency can make all the difference
https://hpbn.co/
781 · 2019-05-27
> I don’t remember any “we don’t hire people on Windows/using an IDE”
Two famous examples:
http://charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html
> If you are a startup looking to hire really excellent people, take notice of .NET on a resume, and ask why it’s there.
https://blog.expensify.com/2011/03/25/ceo-friday-why-we-dont-hire-net-…
js2 · 2019-05-21
> However, after making my way through But How Do It Know? by J. Clark Scott, a book which describes the bits of a simple 8-bit computer from the NAND gates, through to the registers, RAM, bits of the CPU, ALU and I/O, I got a hankering to implement it in code.
Speaking of code, another excellent book along these lines is Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold.
http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/
clarkevans · 2018-09-14
I love Charle's book, Code. Thank you for writing it.
http://www.charlespetzold.com/books/#code
d0mine · 2016-06-06
You might also like the book CODE: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/index.html
It starts with sending signals using flashlights and follows the evolution of computers from the ground up (mostly hardware).
userbinator · 2016-05-15
For "How does the computer really work?" questions, I recommend this book:
http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/
bibinou · 2015-07-07
I started Steven Levy's Hackers and I'm really enjoying it.
http://www.stevenlevy.com/index.php/books/hackers
Seeing as he wrote Crypto and Insanely Great too, it seems to be his kind of thing.
Also folklore.org is a nice collection of fables on how the sausage got made.
Charles Petzold's Code is interspersed with enjoyable historical perspective too.
http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/
wazoox · 2014-10-19
It's very similar to Charles Petzold's "CODE" book. An excellent read.
http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/
daveloyall · 2014-07-07
This book profoundly changed how I look at computers (and other things).
http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/
Petzold's style is narrative, but make no mistake: every sentence is carefully chosen. I recommend resisting the urge to skim, lest you have to backtrack later...
traviscj · 2014-01-29
Code by Charles Petzold [1] is a fantastic introduction. It isn't so much the nitty gritty "this opcode performs this operation, and these are all the tricks to making it do things, edge cases and things you should worry about" and more along the lines of "what opcodes should a CPU have, and how do those translate into electricity flowing through physical wires?" I feel like really thinking through that book made MIPS and x86 assembly much easier for me.
1 - http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/
vezzy-fnord · 2013-12-29
What else but Charles Petzold's phenomenal classic CODE: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software? [1]
http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/ [1]
soferio · 2013-06-16
If you don't need to go as deep or as far, you might want to consider 'Code' by Charles Petzold: http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/
I found it great read and it covers some of the ground of this course.
bediger4000 · 2012-10-31
This is a less forceful version of Charles Petzold's "Does Visual Studio Rot the Mind?", http://www.charlespetzold.com/etc/doesvisualstudiorotthemind.html, but it's worth reading.
AndrewO · 2012-07-14
Or, if the masters are too hard at first, see if their pupils have written annotations. I tried Turing, couldn't even understand why what he was talking about was important (or why his "computers" seem so much... lamer than the ones I was used to), and then found Charles Petzold's "Annotated Turing".
http://www.charlespetzold.com/AnnotatedTuring/
He takes Turing's "On Computable Numbers..." and mixes in chapters giving the necessary background on the history of mathematics, number theory, logic, etc. in-line (albeit, it takes about 100 pages to get to the first sentence of Turing's paper). I whole-heartedly recommend it.
vishvananda · 2012-06-04
Another great book along these lines is CODE, by charles petzold:
http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/
He starts with electricity and builds all the way up to modern computers. It isn't a hands on guide, but it is a very entertaining read.
blairbits · 2012-03-13
After a cursory glance, it seems a lot like Code by Petzold[1], or at least a similar concept in less detail. I loved that book, and I know most others did as well. I'd love to take a look at it.
[1] http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/
bediger · 2011-08-24
Note that this is a meta-article: it consists of a critique of another article.
The other article seems to be looking for the word "abstraction-induced complexity", which is when some interface makes some actions easy at the expense of making other actions difficult. The canonical reference: http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/summary?doi=10.1.1.53.969
Secondly, even notorious Windows Programmers say the same sort of thing about Windows tools. In http://www.charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html, Charles Petzold himself says that Visual Studio rots the brain. He also misses the boat with his predictions about "Avalon", but that's best left to fanbois.
Thirdly, isn't this the same point Paul Graham made in his article http://www.paulgraham.com/gh.html "Great Hackers"?
So, maybe the original article is correct, at least if you believe Authorities.
ksmith · 2011-04-17
If you'd like to learn basic programming concepts right away, check out Pine's 'Learn to Program' (http://pine.fm/LearnToProgram/)
If you'd like to learn best practices, check out Hunt & Thomas' 'The Pragmatic Programmer' (http://www.pragprog.com/the-pragmatic-programmer).
To get up to speed fairly quickly on what's going on under the hood, check out Petzold's 'Code' (http://www.charlespetzold.com/code/) and Nisan & Schocken's
'The Elements of Computing Systems' (http://www1.idc.ac.il/tecs/).
jrmurad · 2010-01-13
404: "The requested URL /blog/2010/01/Dear-EarthLink-Customer-Support.html was not found on this server."
going directly to http://www.charlespetzold.com/ yields a placeholder saying:
"This domain is powered by EarthLink Web Hosting."
baha_man · 2008-05-01
I love Emacs, but I think the lack of 'Intellisense' is one of the few good reasons to use an IDE over Emacs or Vim. Some people think Intellisense rots the brain [1], but I can't see anyone ever saying that about eldoc-mode.
[1] http://www.charlespetzold.com/etc/DoesVisualStudioRotTheMind.html