The Annotated Turing: A Guided Tour Through Alan Turing's Historic Paper on Computability and the Turing Machine

Turing's 1936 Paper "On Computational Numbers" is often cited as a landmark in the history of computing, but it's details are not widely considered or well known today. If you're curious to know more about the Paper, and why it's important, you can do no better than read this book. It contains a complete transcript of the original Paper, with extensive commentary and explanation from Petzold that make the Paper accessible and understandable to a wider audience (and even for specialists, this book is probably a better choice than just reading the original Paper!). Petzold's enthusiasm for the topic shines through in an excellent writing style, striking a good balance between detailed technicalities and simpler descriptions, in a friendly helpful way that will neither confuse the layman nor bore the expert.Petzold supplies invaluable historical context: some of the developments in mathematics in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries that undoubtedly influenced Turing, and which appear explicitly in the paper. This is a very useful aid to understanding Turing's paper for readers not expert in those topics of mathematics (which is almost all of us who don't have post-graduate degrees in very specialised areas of pure maths!). But the book is definitely aimed at readers with some mathematical background and aptitude. If (UK) O-level / GCSE maths was a mystery to you, you may struggle; if you have A-level maths or computing you'll be fine. If you're somewhere in between, Petzold's explanations will happily guide you through the details.Two things this book isn't: First, if you want a book that starts from Turing's paper then delves into even more advanced mathematical research and theories, then this isn't the one for you (although it does helpfully include a summary of more recent work that follows on from Turing's ideas). Second, at the other extreme: although this book includes some biographical information, if you want a detailed non-technical biography of Turing you should look elsewhere.But for all the rest of us between these two extremes, who want to understand what Turing machines are from the original source, then I wholeheartedly recommend this book.My only complaint, and a very minor one, is that Petzold's description of Bletchley Park's location would place it in Suffolk rather than Buckinghamshire! But given the complexity of the book's subject matter, it is a testament to the quality of Petzold's research that this is his only error.

As part of a numerous group of programmers without a university degree in the field, it is not too easy for me to grasp the academic language of many fundamental texts. Therefore, it's probably no surprise that I was not very satisfied after finishing Turing's paper. I got the main idea, sure, but I did not have the patience and diligence required to decipher his machine descriptions and truly grasp the monumental achievement which this paper represents.I recently read Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software, and was fascinated by it. Here, Petzold again grabbed my attention and held it for almost the entirety of the book (almost, since some portions are more difficult than others, but not excessively so). He takes Turing's paper, and the correction published a year later, and dissects them vigorously, presenting a lot of background knowledge, historical events and plenty of illustrative examples.The best word I can use to summarize is: Wow. This is the kind of book which leaves you feeling good about yourself. To someone like me, lacking any formal education in information theory, mathematical logic and all the other subjects more or less present in a CS course, this is a must-read.Therefore, as stated in the headline, if you're here, reading this book's description and trying to decide whether it's worth it - it truly is. Even if, unlike me, you're able to fully comprehend On Computable Numbers, you'll probably learn a lot from it, or, at the very least, enjoy the read.

I am a very experienced computer programmer, but not much of a mathematician. I read Petzold's book 'Code' for fun and absolutely loved it (*that* book gets 5 stars). I also know what a Turing machine is, albeit from a modern perspective. Given all that, I was curious about Turing's original paper. Petzold does a great job of dissecting Turing's paper, paragraph by paragraph, but the subject matter is a challenge. Gothic German! I found I was skimming bits in the hope that it would get easier. It doesn't. So having got to the end of the book, I will have to go back and re-read it, slowly and carefully this time. I feel Petzold *could* have explained things a bit better, but then the book would have been that much larger. Too large, probably. The real problem is me - not quite smart enough and in too much of a hurry. This is a book to be read slowly, properly studying each example before moving on to the next.

Really good review of Turing's seminal paper, mixed with history and anechdotes. I can't imagine how much work it took the author to research and write this.It's not the hardest book to read, but it's definitely not easy either. I'm a computer scientist myself (and I used to teach Turing Machines), so that probably helped me follow it.

I've just finished reading this book, and I enjoyed it greatly. Do I understand much more about Turing's work on the Entscheidungsproblem problem? No, not much, but that's my fault not the author. I know a bit more about the Turing Machine - and that IS fascinating. You can start to see where computing came from (I've been working on computers for over 40 years now, and have done a lot of study - I learn more from this book . Petzold writes engagingly, knowledgeably, and passionately about the work - and that was good enough for me to not only complete the book, but a) look at other books by Petzold; and b) look at Alonzo Church.

I needed to ensure that I fully understood the Turing Machine and this book appeared to be suitable.I have had it for two days and find it explains the principle of Turing's machine very well and also covers concepts of programming from first principles with just digits 0 and 1 along with functionally defined m-configurations (fully explained in the text).I wish I had bought it earlier, it has certainly enabled me to fully understand Turing's concepts.

Petzold describes well the background needed to get a better understanding of this behind this brilliant paper.

Para estudar teoria da computação.

The book begins with a very fast paced general history of maths and computing, laying multiple concepts and past discoveries (which eventually made the turing machine possible) in a very natural way and in chronological order. The authors clearly show they understand the reasons for maths to be studied and the mechanics of making new discoveries.The book contains the original paper content updated as little as possible, separated by notes of varying length from the author. if a mistake or a confusing element of the original Turing paper is present, it is generally also addressed in these annotations. You can always skip these annotations if you understand the paper so far, which makes reading the book a highly customizable experience.

An excellent companion book to Turing seminal paper on (future called) Turing machines. Every Computer Science student should read it.

Am Anfang recht einfach und unterhaltsam geschrieben, aber es nimmt schnell Fahrt auf und wird mathematisch anspruchsvoll. Zumindest für mich. Dennoch sehr empfehlenswerter Klassiker für die IT-Branche.

Ce livre fait exactement ce qu'il annonce : nous expliquer réellement le chef-d'oeuvre d'Alan Turing, page après page, phrase après phrase, etc.On commence par les rappels indispensables quant au contexte mathématique, avant de plonger au cœur de l'article scientifique "On Computable Numbers, with an Application to the Entscheidungsproblem" (qui faisait 36 pages) : il est reproduit morceau par morceau, et les explications suivent, ce qui donne au final environ 200 pages d'explications...Pour toute personne qui a déjà été sensibilisée "de loin" au travail de Turing, ou qui en a lu des vulgarisations, c'est un régal que de pouvoir enfin contempler le génie du Turing dans toute sa splendeur, et même de comprendre la quasi-intégralité de son raisonnement.Il faut parfois s'accrocher un peu pour suivre, mais on y parvient avec un plaisir renouvelé à chaque page. On comprend enfin le lien entre la fameuse machine de Turing, les problèmes de décision qu'elle peut permette de résoudre intellectuellement, le travail de Church sur le même sujet, etc.Bref, on touche ici du doigt l'histoire du "digital" (pun intended) et de la logique, grâce à Charles Pezold (auteur par ailleurs de nombreux ouvrages d'informatique plus conventionnels).Il faudrait tout simplement en faire une collection (en maintenant le même niveau, pas simple) : "Annotated Newton", "Annotated Einstein", "Annotated Galois", etc... :)