A primer on the underlying technologies that allow computer programs to work. Covers topics like computer hardware, combinatorial logic, sequential logic, computer architecture, computer anatomy, and Input/Output. Many coders are unfamiliar with the underlying technologies that make their programs run. But why should you care when your code appears to work? Because you want it to run well and not be riddled with hard-to-find bugs. You don't want to be in the news because your code had a security problem. Lots of technical detail is available online but it's not organized or collected into a convenient place. In The Secret Life of Programs, veteran engineer Jonathan E. Steinhart explores--in depth--the foundational concepts that underlie the machine. Subjects like computer hardware, how software behaves on hardware, as well as how people have solved problems using technology over time. You'll learn: How the real world is converted into a form that computers understand, like bits, logic, numbers, text, and colors The fundamental building blocks that make up a computer including logic gates, adders, decoders, registers, and memory Why designing programs to match computer hardware, especially memory, improves performance How programs are converted into machine language that computers understand How software building blocks are combined to create programs like web browsers Clever tricks for making programs more efficient, like loop invariance, strength reduction, and recursive subdivision The fundamentals of computer security and machine intelligence Project design, documentation, scheduling, portability, maintenance, and other practical programming realities. Learn what really happens when your code runs on the machine and you'll learn to craft better, more efficient code.

Computer programming is not abstract and programs run on a machine. Knowing how computers work and how programs run on them is essential to becoming a better programmer, and understanding underlying technologies can help you develop a sense of what can go wrong. The Secret Life of Programs (formerly Foundations of Computer Programming) fills in the gaps in computer education by giving readers a look under the hood of programming, at the machine. Readers learn how software behaves when running on hardware; how programs manipulate data in memory; how computers process languages; and how web browsers work. They'll also learn how to write efficient programs, computer security basics, and real-world considerations to have in mind when writing code.

The author of Opening Up draws on groundbreaking research in computational linguistics to explain what our language choices reveal about feelings, self-concept and social intelligence, in a lighthearted treatise that also explores the language personalities of famous individuals. 40,000 first printing.

This collection enriches and complicates the history of prose fiction between Richardson and Fielding at mid-century and Austen at the turn of the century by focusing on it-narratives, a once popular form largely forgotten by readers and critics alike. The volume also advances important work on eighteenth-century consumer culture and the theory of things. The essays that comprise The Secret Life of Things thus bring new texts, and new ways of thinking about familiar ones, to our notice. Those essays range from the role of it-narratives in period debates about copyright to their complex relationship with object-riddled sentimental fictions, from anti-semitism in Chrysal to jingoistic imperialism in The Adventures of a Rupee, from the it-narrative as a variety of whore's biography to a consideration of its contributions to an emergent middle-class ideology.

A family therapist explains the necessity of privacy and offers guidance to parents about what to tell and what not to tell young children.

Whether one calls it instinct, an inner sense, gut feelings, ESP, or hunches, the expectant mother's intuition is legendary. "The Secret Life of the Expectant Mother" presents compelling stories of pregnant women who have a sense of communication with their unborn child, flashes about medical complications, or dreams that foreshadow the future. This book contains dozens of practical exercises designed to develop intuition and strengthen the parent-child bond.