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How Software Works: The Magic Behind Encryption, CGI, Search Engines, and Other Everyday Technologies by [V. Anton Spraul]

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V. Anton Spraul

How Software Works: The Magic Behind Encryption, CGI, Search Engines, and Other Everyday Technologies 1st Edition, Kindle Edition

by V. Anton Spraul (Author) Format: Kindle Edition

4.4 47 ratings

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We use software every day to perform all kinds of magical, powerful tasks. It's the force behind stunning CGI graphics, safe online shopping, and speedy Google searches. Software drives the modern world, but its inner workings remain a mystery to many.

How Software Works explains how computers perform common-yet-amazing tasks that we take for granted every day.

Inside you'll learn:
–How data is encrypted
–How passwords are used and protected
–How computer graphics are created
–How video is compressed for streaming and storage
–How data is searched (and found) in huge databases
–How programs can work together on the same problem without conflict
–How data travels over the Internet

How Software Works breaks down these processes with patient explanations and intuitive diagrams so that anyone can understand—no technical background is required, and you won't be reading through any code. In plain English, you'll examine the intricate logic behind the technologies you constantly use but never understood.

If you've ever wondered what really goes on behind your computer screen, How Software Works will give you fascinating look into the software all around you.

ISBN-13

978-1593276669
Edition

1st
Sticky notes

Not Enabled
Publisher

No Starch Press
Publication date

August 1, 2015
Language

English
File size

9400 KB
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Editorial Reviews

About the Author

V. Anton Spraul has taught introductory programming and computer science for more than 15 years. He is the author of Computer Science Made Simple (Broadway), Think Like a Programmer (No Starch Press), and How Software Works (No Starch Press). He offers advice for beginning programmers in his series "Learning to Program: A Guide" on his website at vantonspraul.com.

--This text refers to an alternate kindle_edition edition.

Product details

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0143MS2SW
Publisher ‏ : ‎ No Starch Press; 1st edition (August 1, 2015)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ August 1, 2015
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 9400 KB
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Print length ‏ : ‎ 326 pages

Best Sellers Rank: #1,424,371 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- #467 in Internet Culture
- #603 in Web Site Design
- #1,305 in Software Development (Kindle Store)

Customer Reviews:
4.4 47 ratings

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V. Anton Spraul

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V. Anton Spraul has lived his entire life in Birmingham, Alabama, while somehow acquiring so little accent that locals assume he's from Ohio. He's an award-winning teacher with two degrees in computer science, and considers his nonfiction writing another form of teaching. His most popular book, Think Like a Programmer, combats a common malady for beginning programmers: the inability to write a complete, original program from scratch. "The book every programmer should read once" has fans around the globe and has been translated into five languages. Spraul maintains a blog on a range of topics and creates YouTube videos that extend the topics in his books. In his off-hours, he reads across a range of seriousness from economics texts to old-fashioned mysteries, records music, and plays games on computers he builds himself.

Customer reviews

4.4 out of 5

47 global ratings

5 star		60%
4 star		22%
3 star		14%
2 star		5%
1 star 0% (0%)		0%

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Mariomolinito

Leaves you wanting more

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 6, 2021

Verified Purchase

It's important to understand that this book does not dive deep into the many intricacies of each subject. Though it does scratch the surface, thus leaving us the readers with the option of either researching more about the subject elsewhere or contempt with understanding the topic abstractly. I enjoy this property of the book. Very well written, with sufficient background information on each subject so that the reader feel's like a pro.

Helpful

Dan

Nice book, over promises.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 7, 2017

Verified Purchase

Good information, but the title is a bit over promising. Much more reading on computer architecture and organization is needed to understand how software 'works'.
This book goes into broader topics like cgi, animation.
I don't understand the meaning of the cover.

One person found this helpful

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PhillyMusicLover

Fantastic book about the software all around us

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on June 27, 2016

Verified Purchase

Loved reading this book!! It very clearly explained how extremely popular concepts (secure web browsing, computer graphics, search engines) work in lucid detail. Couldn't put it down and I'm now better off for it

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Wallace Potter

Well written and it was easy to stay interested while going from subject to subject

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on January 9, 2017

Verified Purchase

Well written
and it was easy to stay interested while going from subject to subject.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on March 1, 2019

Awesome condition.

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on November 28, 2017

Verified Purchase

not a great book on the subject. wish i hadnot bought it

Helpful

David Merkel

Another Book Review from the Aleph Blog

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on September 13, 2015

Can you explain to a non-technical reader how software works? It depends on what you mean by “software” and “explain.”

With respect to software, this particular book focuses on a few areas that are hot today, and not computing in general. Take a look at the following list. What would it be like to not have the following technologies?

Graphic display, both for pictures and video
Security — whether in the form of passwords, encryption, including public key cryptography
Data compression techniques to reduce the amount of data sent, whether for text, pictures, or video
Web Search
Maps that help us find the most efficient driving route
Concurrency — allowing multiple parties to use the same application at the same time
The web and the internet generally would be a dramatically different place, and much smaller, as it was in 1990 slightly after Tim Berners-Lee created HTTP (Hypertext Transfer Protocol).

The topics here are important and affect our daily lives. The author of “How Software Works” makes a significant effort to explain programming in a way that teenagers and adults could understand, using pictures, tables, flowcharts, simplified numerical examples, and more.

Now, reading this book will give you a top-level view of how these technologies work, but not much more. It will help you understand some of the tradeoffs that go on in computing. How do you balance:

Richness of data delivered versus resource use and speed of display.
Security versus ease of use
Reduction of size of data versus loss of fidelity in an image or video
And more, there are a lot of tradeoffs in programming.
The ideal audience for this book is bright adults who aren’t programmers, but want some appreciation of the hidden complexity behind much of what goes on on the internet. The second ideal audience would be teenagers and young adults who might want a career in computer science, who might benefit from exposure to these varied areas of software. Who knows? One area might catch their fancy, and then they can study it for real, and put it into practice. (I’m giving this book to my second daughter who is interested in programming.)

Quibbles

On page 39, the author suggests that there is no way to do square roots, that it is just a guesswork procedure. There are algorithms to do square roots — whether those are used in computing, I don’t know, but it wouldn’t be hard to implement. I was doing it when I was 10. (I’m not much of a programmer presently, but I am good at math.)

Summary / Who Would Benefit from this Book

I liked this book. Give it to friends who want to learn about how much of the web is designed. Give it to interested teenagers to expand their horizons in computing.

One person found this helpful

Helpful

Good reference book but not as plain as some would wish for

Reviewed in the United States 🇺🇸 on October 4, 2015

Vine Customer Review of Free Product( What's this? )

Like most people, I don’t give much thought about what goes “under the hood” when I’m doing a web search, shopping online, or editing my pictures with my computer. Our devices are an integral part of our lives but very few of us will stop a few moments to marvel at how on earth we can play games on our tablets or how they help us find the fastest route to a location. Well, I got curious one day and picked up V. Anton Spraul’s “How Software Works” to see if it would help me understand how a computer accomplishes some of the tasks we take for granted.

Mr. Spraul’s book is divided into 9 chapters. The first three chapters give readers a look as to how encryption and passwords work to ensure Web security. The next two chapters open the doors to the wonders of movie CGI and video game graphics. Chapter 6 explains how then videos and images are compressed so that they may fit in a Blu-ray disc or DVD. Chapter 7 helps us understand what happens when we do a search and how search engines work. Chapter 8 deals with concurrency or how a computer can run two or three programs at the same time. The last chapter is about map routes.

I found “How Software Works” to be interesting and I did gain some understanding as to how software operates. I’m no techie and although the publishers claim that the book is written in plain English, and that no technical background is required, I still found the chapters about movie CGI and video game graphics difficult to grasp. For some reason, the black and white diagrams didn’t work for me and I thought that maybe if they were in color, they would get their point across better. Gray, black and white graphics are not very effective when you’re talking about lighting, reflection, shadows and coloring. On the other hand, I found the other chapters fascinating, especially the ones about concurrency, web searching, encryption and passwords. Now I know how https work, why we need read-only, and the meaning of some cool terminology like semaphore, hashing, race conditions, and handshaking. In spite of the fact that it requires some technical understanding to read it, “How Software Works” makes for a good reference book for those looking for answers as to how computers do their magic.

9 people found this helpful

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NATWEST GOLD

Mostly a dull read

Reviewed in the United Kingdom 🇬🇧 on August 1, 2016

Verified Purchase

A bit on the dull side. I found the chapter on encryption interesting but the rest dull and boring - not worth £11

One person found this helpful

Nyctaclope

Achat du livre "How software works"

Reviewed in France 🇫🇷 on April 2, 2017

Verified Purchase

Livraison plus rapide qu'attendu.
Emballage soigné.
Ce livre ( en anglais bien sûr, comme attendu ) m'avait été recommandé, il est très intéressant et très didactique. Se lit sans trop de difficultés
A recommander aux amateurs ( débutants, et même -très- confirmés ) d'informatique, souhaitant savoir ce qu'il y a derrière les logiciels courants.
Les explications sur ( entre autres ) les diverses méthodes de cryptage sont très bien faites et passionnantes.
Une foule d'autres sujets de base est abordée. On peut butiner ce livre par chapitres indépendants, selon ses besoins et curiosités.
Je recommande vraiment.

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