I just completed part 1 building a computer from gates and writing an assembler and am in the middle of part 2 where you develop compilers and a stack based virtual machine.
For someone like me who did not study computer science but has been a self taught programmer in the Analytics spacefor over a decade, this has been a tremendously useful and accessible introduction to basic CS concepts and very eye opening in terms of what's actually happening under the hood. This course is highly recommended if you've not studied CS though be aware the second part of the course where you develop compilers is quite intense though being an online course, you can pick your pace.
I wonder if there are similar courses on CS algorithms for people who didn't study CS in college.
Algorithmic Design and Techniques
Data Structures Fundamentals
Graph Algorithms
NP-Complete Problems
String Processing and Pattern Matching Algorithms
Dynamic Programming: Applications In Machine Learning and Genomics
Graph Algorithms in Genome Sequencing
Algorithms and Data Structures Capstone
Very little of which is communicated in any way to help someone learn how compilers work.
In the actual history of computing very few good compilers were ever written by algorithm and data structures professors; most were written by people who had a pragmatic drive to get something done. Theory is good but without practice it is little more than navel gazing. Theory and practice need each other.
The reason that nand2tetris works so well as a course is that it gives you a concrete example of how all these algorithms and data structures are combined in order to turn an abstract description (the source code) into a running program that also includes how that computing is achieved through compiler, assembler, linker, run time, operating system, isa, and finally in transistors.
The true issue it gets to is that most programmers have very little understanding of how computers actually work, and when things break they just do high order guessing to get things working again rather than truly understanding what went wrong.
> I wonder if there are similar courses on CS algorithms for people who didn't study CS in college.
This might be a bit more challenging and less hand holding than the nand2tetris course but if you are up for it, why not go with the best? Sedgewick Algorithm book has been one of the standard algorithm books in universities for a long time.
My most striking instance yet of the Baader-Meinhof phenomenon: yesterday, I ran into a colleague I hadn't seen in months, and he recommended I check out this incredibly cool website where you build a basic computer starting with logic gates called nandgame.com. Just now, I was about to check it out, but thought I'd skim Hacker News first... To stumble upon this post, and a comment from the nandgame creator himself. Thank you in advance for building such an awesome educational resource!
Just played through it and really liked it! I think this is just the right level of abstraction for a beginning CS student. Makes it easy to grasp the compositional nature of computers without having to deal with all the details that make circuit design hard, like the non-instantaneous response of real components.
This is really awesome.. I too love the book Code by Petzold. I was wondering if I could help translate this into German? I have some work colleagues that could really benefit, but I think it would be easier if the explanatory text was German.
Have spent some time playing it - something that would be interesting is a view switch which expands your design again into NAND gates such that you can really appreciate the complexity of what's going on.
If I make a XOR circuit with 4 NAND gates it says I can do better. My 3 gate solution is to use an AND, OR, and NAND gate which would have been 6 NAND gates. However it gives me full marks for my 3 gate solution.
Yeah it currently only compares the solutions towards the minimum number of components of any type. I also intend to compare against the minimum number of nand gates overall, but this is not yet supported.
I really cannot recommend this course enough, I find myself referring back to it in so many different fields (security, debugging, programming language design)
When I finished school, I was fairly knowledgeable about physics, including logic gates and electronics, and I was a fairly good programmer, but I had no idea how that virtual world arose from the physical.
When I type on a keyboard, what is physically happening in the universe?
Using everyday objects and familiar language systems such as Braille and Morse code, author Charles Petzold weaves an illuminating narrative for anyone who’s ever wondered about the secret inner life of computers and other smart machines.
... cleverly illustrated and eminently comprehensible story ... No matter what your level of technical savvy, CODE will charm you—and perhaps even awaken the technophile within.
I think you and the GP are using "lower level" in different ways. GP means with a lower barrier to entry, you mean "closer to the electrons" if I understand both of you correctly.
Code goes into how logic gates like the nand gate are built, so it does start at a lower level than Nand to Tetris which start with nand gates as primitives.
I wish that existed as a last year course in college. It has a lot of recap on the parts that creates a modern day computer and likely gives you understanding where imperative languages come from.
Once you’ve learned programming, this book is maybe the perfect survey course to understand systems. It gave me a framework for understanding all the layers from CPU to ReactJS that 4+ years of college never could so concisely
Readit News
For someone like me who did not study computer science but has been a self taught programmer in the Analytics spacefor over a decade, this has been a tremendously useful and accessible introduction to basic CS concepts and very eye opening in terms of what's actually happening under the hood. This course is highly recommended if you've not studied CS though be aware the second part of the course where you develop compilers is quite intense though being an online course, you can pick your pace.
I wonder if there are similar courses on CS algorithms for people who didn't study CS in college.
Comprises the following courses
Algorithmic Design and Techniques Data Structures Fundamentals Graph Algorithms NP-Complete Problems String Processing and Pattern Matching Algorithms Dynamic Programming: Applications In Machine Learning and Genomics Graph Algorithms in Genome Sequencing Algorithms and Data Structures Capstone
In the actual history of computing very few good compilers were ever written by algorithm and data structures professors; most were written by people who had a pragmatic drive to get something done. Theory is good but without practice it is little more than navel gazing. Theory and practice need each other.
The reason that nand2tetris works so well as a course is that it gives you a concrete example of how all these algorithms and data structures are combined in order to turn an abstract description (the source code) into a running program that also includes how that computing is achieved through compiler, assembler, linker, run time, operating system, isa, and finally in transistors.
The true issue it gets to is that most programmers have very little understanding of how computers actually work, and when things break they just do high order guessing to get things working again rather than truly understanding what went wrong.
This might be a bit more challenging and less hand holding than the nand2tetris course but if you are up for it, why not go with the best? Sedgewick Algorithm book has been one of the standard algorithm books in universities for a long time.
https://algs4.cs.princeton.edu/home/
https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part1
https://www.coursera.org/learn/algorithms-part2
Dead Comment
When I finished school, I was fairly knowledgeable about physics, including logic gates and electronics, and I was a fairly good programmer, but I had no idea how that virtual world arose from the physical.
When I type on a keyboard, what is physically happening in the universe?
This course helped me understand that question.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13209452
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14526344
https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw...
... cleverly illustrated and eminently comprehensible story ... No matter what your level of technical savvy, CODE will charm you—and perhaps even awaken the technophile within.
Code doesn’t sound “slightly lower level”.
http://excamera.com/sphinx/fpga-cpu.html