Every idea explained twice. First in plain language, with an everyday comparison and a worked example, as if to someone who has never opened a terminal. Then again in the correct technical vocabulary, with the real units, real specifications and the exact figures an engineer quotes.
Read everything, in order, from Chapter 1. It starts with electricity in a wire and assumes nothing.
Read only the blocks marked PLAIN, front to back, and you will understand the whole of computing. Then return for the blocks marked TECHNICAL.
Chapter 52 is the numbers, command cheat sheets and two diagnostic decision trees. Chapter 53 is the timeline and 723-term glossary.
Rock, electricity, silicon, transistors, logic and memory. Everything a computer is made of, before any software exists.
How switches become numbers, and numbers become text, pictures on a screen and sound in the air.
The processor, the memory ladder, storage, the buses and drivers that join it all up, and how we got here.
From punched cards to compilers, languages, operating systems, the terminal, and what an executable file really is.
One key press traced from your finger to the light in your eye, and how the picture is computed.
Signals, addresses, names, routes and encryption -- worked throughout on one real network failure.
The web, APIs, version control, automation, the cloud and keeping all of it safe.
How a game runs sixty times a second, and how a language model is built, judged and used.
The numbers, commands, decision trees, timeline and glossary you will come back to.