The Annotated Turing
by Charles Petzold · first published 2008
80% recommend20% neutral
Why HN recommends it
Walks line by line through Turing's original computability paper, adding explanations and examples, and needs only high school math. Suits beginners and curious programmers who want to read the actual paper.
Summarised by Claude from recommending comments
Programming Legend Charles Petzold unlocks the secrets of the extraordinary and prescient 1936 paper by Alan M. Turing. Mathematician Alan Turing invented an imaginary computer known as the Turing Machine; in an age before computers, he explored the concept of what it meant to be computable, creating the field of computability theory in the process, a foundation of present-day computer programming.
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"The Annotated Turing" by Charles Petzold: https://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Turing-Through-Historic-Com...
on “Ask HN: What's the best computer science book you've read recently?” ↗…Cantor's Diagonal Argument[1] is the first that comes to mind, probably even more as an example of a creative approach than for its implications (although those are pretty huge too). Charles Petzold's "Annotated Turing" has a great run down of this and a bunch of the other mind-blowing things that came out of math in the late 19th/early 20th centuries. [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cantors_diagonal_argument
on “What's the most mind-blowing fact you heard/read in your life?” ↗Another good book by Charles Petzold is The Annotated Turing. http://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Turing-Through-Historic-Comp...
on “The Book That Every Programmer Should Read” ↗For those interested in reading “On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem”, I recommend doing so via Charles Petzold's "The Annotated Turing". Petzold's book presents the paper, with annotations, historical context, and biographical information. The actual text of the paper is set off with a different background so there is never any confusion…
on “Turing” ↗“On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem” is a hugely important work, and Petzold's book "The Annotated Turing" makes it very accessible. I highly recommend anyone who is interested pick up a copy. High school education is all that's really needed. Turing was decades ahead of the rest of us. It's a shame that…
on ““The Imitation Game” and Alan Turing’s Real Contribution to Computing” ↗…Hodges http://www.amazon.com/Alan-Turing-Enigma-Inspired-Imitation/... Definitive and detailed biography. 2. Alan M. Turing by Sara Turing http://www.amazon.com/Alan-M-Turing-Centenary-Edition/dp/110... Deeply personal biography of her dead son. 3. The Annotated Turing by Charles Petzold http://www.amazon.com/Annotated-Turing-Through-Historic-Comp... Turing's famous 1936 explained in detail.
on “Alan Turing's notebook sold for $1M” ↗…Magnificent Principia by Colin Pask. Basically it's a guided tour of what could be argued is the most important scientific text of all time. I really enjoy books like that, and like Charles Petzold's Annotated Turing. Any other recommendations in that style would be much appreciated.
on “Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica Reissued” ↗The Annotated Turing by Petzold (On Computable Numbers broken down, annotated, explained, and talked around. Would recommend to anyone interested in CS but without (yet) having formally studied it. I read it in sixth form,…
on “Ask HN: The book that did it for you in math and/or CS?” ↗…but fully intend to. - I have just read some of The Man from the Future by Ananyo Bhattyacharya is a biography of John von Neumann. It already seems very good and I plan to read through the end. - The Annotated Turing deals a lot with history and is a read of a lifetime. ____ - I have not read A Mind at Work yet. It is a biography of Claude Shanon. I would recommend you to check it out. - Sylvia Nasar's A Beautiful…
on “Ask HN: Any recommendation for a good History of Science book?” ↗Hodge's biography is great. Also recommended is "The Annotated Turing" by Charles Petzold (yes, that Charles Petzold) which is a heavily annotated walkthrough of Turing's paper "On computable numbers, with an application to the Entscheidungsproblem"), and for the hardcore…
on “The Genius of Turing” ↗…http://guohanwei.51.net/code/A%20Mathematical%20Theory%20of%... "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem" by Alan Turing http://l3d.cs.colorado.edu/~ctg/classes/lib/canon/turing-com... [pdf] I would add that 'The Annotated Turing' by Charles Petzold http://www.theannotatedturing.com/ is an excellent treatment of Turings paper, including much of the relevant additional math and computing history both before and after.
on “Papers Every Programmer Should Read (At Least Twice)” ↗…annotations. I tried Turing, couldn't even understand why what he was talking about was important (or why his "computers" seem so much... lamer than the ones I was used to), and then found Charles Petzold's "Annotated Turing". http://www.charlespetzold.com/AnnotatedTuring/ He takes Turing's "On Computable Numbers..." and mixes in chapters giving the necessary background on the history of mathematics, number theory, logic,…
on “Read the masters” ↗A key part of Turing's computability paper hinges on the diagonal argument. It's really well covered in 'The Annotated Turing' by Charles Petzold. In Cantor's version, we prove that numbers (real numbers?) are not enumerable by creating a new number. In Turing's paper, he enumerates all valid Turing machines in a similar way,…
on “Cantor's Diagonal Proof” ↗I suggest reading Turing's paper in the form of Charles Petzold's book The Annotated Turing [0]. 0. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/0470229055
on “x86 is Turing-complete with no registers” ↗…What I have found when revisiting topics is that my life experience contributes into the subject for me rather than merely being a set of facts & analogies from someone else. I only recently read The Annotated Turing by Petzold, that was the kind of eye opener that would have looked far to dry a subject to me years ago. Time has given me the ability to peek through Turing's eyes and imagine the sociological and pedagogical…
on “Is CSS Turing Complete?” ↗