a disappointing book
Oh, he may know his business, but I never got far enough into the book to find out. It was downright painful to have to contend with the lack of copy editing that showed up with singular/plural confusion, past/present confusion, people "who's backgrounds" and other spelling confusion, and other garbage. Our language is called English, and most publishers can afford a copy editor.
On top of that, and particularly painful, was a hilarious misunderstanding of the history of the von Neumann architecture for computers, about which he apparently has only a smattering of confused hearsay---possibly a dimly remembered class. He has it begin in a competition between Harvard and Princeton Universities (actually Princeton University had absolutely nothing to do with it, nor did Harvard) to improve naval artillery (pure fiction), a project of which a man named von Neumann was chief scientist. In fact (I was there) von Neumann was one of the world's greatest mathematicians (not a functionary running a minor Navy program), the project was at the Institute for Advanced Study (which is housed in the town of Princeton, but has nothing to do with the University), and the work there was aimed at weather forecasting. I won't even touch his confusion about the architecture itself. None of this disqualifies him as an 8051 guru, but it sure does detract from his credibility. I found I just couldn't go on.
Painful
There is probably some really good material in here somewhere but I haven't been able to find it. The book is disorganized and downright painful to read. There are lots of diagrams but they are equally painful. Simply put, the information content is too diffuse for what should be a crisp technical presentation. The book has to be edited and shortened to one third its current length and maybe then it will be a good buy.
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