From a NAND Gate To Tetris

mikejuk writes "Long before the current crop of MOOCs (Massive Online Open Course) there was a course that taught you all you needed to know about computers by starting from the NAND gate and working its way up through the logic circuits needed for a computer, on to an assembler, a compiler, an operating system, and finally Tetris. Recently one of the creators of the course, Shimon Schocken, gave a TED talk explaining how it all happened and why it is still relevant today. Once you have seen what is on offer at http://www.nand2tetris.org/ you will probably decide that it is not only still relevant but the only way to really understand what computers are all about."

Comments

Logic is Logic

[thejuggler]

Somewhere between learning to write my first "Hello World" program on the Apple IIe (and the TI99/4A) and making a career out of programming years later, I went to schools for Computer Repair and Bio-Medical Electronics. I still have a pile of 7400 series IC chips and my breadboards amongst other electronic components. I learned analog and digital circuit design in the late 80's. The logic learned in those classes still applies to everyday programming today. No matter what I did in those previous careers, the training I did then still applies today. AND, OR, NOT, NAND, NOR, XOR and XNOR are still the 7 basic logic elements that make up all digital electronics and programming. From there Truth Tables are built and boolean algebra is applied to create any and all circuits and code today. In my humble opinion these are still essential to training people new to various IT fields. It's like having to learn nous, verbs, adverbs and adjectives in order to write understandable thoughts. If you lack this basic understanding learning the more advance concepts is difficult at best. It's good to see these are still being taught somewhere.

Re:So many great courses around now

[donscarletti]

When I studied Comp Sci in the early 00s, we had a compulsary couse on digital circuits, ground up sort of stuff, nand gates, verilog, that sort of thing. If you didn't have a course like that, it is regretable.

My proudest moment is my 80 something year old grandfather, who's own father had built radios for a living and who's brother is a retired electrical engineer saw my textbook and grilled me about solid state switching. He said he did not understand how a signal could be selected based on another signal without the use of electromechanical relays. He knew roughly how a transistor works and I explained how they could be combined into AND, OR and NOT gates. From there, I drew a circuit digram of a multiplexer and to him it was like some great realization that there was no perversion of God's laws going on inside a CPU (joke).

He bought his first PC and Digital Camera within a month.