Charles Petzold (born February 2, 1953) is an American programmer and technical author on Microsoft Windows applications.

In 1979, Petzold started building a computer-controlled digital electronic music synthesizer based on the Zilog Z80 microprocessor.

[3] Petzold wrote the article A Step-by-Step Guide to Building Your First Windows Application" for MSJ, Vol.1, No.

[3] Petzold told some people at a Microsoft-related function that he really enjoyed writing this type of article.

This resulted in Petzold being contracted to write the first edition of Programming Windows from January until August 1987.