[look_lookatme]

The amazing thing about Code is how it traces the connection of formal logic (in the Aristotelian sense) to the, as you say, pre-computer code of braille and even flag signals to form the foundations of modern computing.

I am a self-taught developer and probably had 10 years experience in web development when I first read Code. I would have these little moments of revelation where my mind would get ahead of the narrative of the text because I was working backwards from my higher level understanding to Petzolds lower level descriptions. I think of this book fairly often when reading technical documentation or articles.

I recently listened to Jim Keller relate engineering and design to following recipes in cooking [1]. Most people just execute stacks of recipes in their day-to-day life and they can be very good at that and the results of what they make can be very good. But to be an expert at cooking you need to achieve a deeper understanding of what is food and how food works (say, on a physics or thermodynamic level). I am very much a programming recipe executor but reading Code I got to touch some elements of expertise, which was rewarding.

https://youtu.be/Nb2tebYAaOA?t=1351