Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by percentcer 1464 days ago
I'm not the OP, but some personal examples:

- why is little-end / big-end a thing?

- why is volatile memory called volatile? and why can't we just keep that data around?

- what can a 64-bit computer do that a 32-bit computer can't?

- what do people mean when they say "code is data"

- what's an instruction, really?

- how did people program computers before they had screens?

- how did people program computers before they had keyboards?

- why is it called 2's complement?

And others that I can't recall right now. It's a fantastic book and I recommend it to everyone who is the slightest bit interested in how computers work.

2 comments

> why is it called 2's complement?

And why the apostrophes in two's complement and ones' complement are in different places.

That's a great list anyway, thanks!