My 7yo son has been interested in boolean logic. I thought surely something like this exists where I can show him how you can chain gates to build larger systems. Couldn't find one! Will have to download this tonight.
I think Digital Circuit Board on Steam is pretty nice. It's a pure sandbox, not a game, so you need an idea of what you want to build but if you do, it's nice and fast (circuits are, as I understand it, compiled).
It also comes with a memory and screen abstraction, which can increase performance further over hand-rolled memory and screens once you want that.
It doesn't have any encapsulation, though, which is odd since it compiles things anyway.
Logisim is a nice FOSS software in this space as well. I've designed a CPU in it during COVID, which then became a never-finished breadboard project that stilll looks at me accusingly from some corner of my living room. Oh well.
In addition to boolean logic, Logisim also includes more advanced components such as static RAM, as well as interesting things to drive with it, such as displays. It was developed for use in schools and is therefore designed to be easy to work (or rather play) with.
The project itself has been dead since 2011 or so, but there is an actively maintained fork [1].
If you go to e.g. Circuits -> Combinatorial Logic -> Full adder, you can see that digital logic is available too. (Uses a lot of CPU, so maybe reduce simulation speed and current speed. You don't need those for digital stuff.)
Maybe it doesn't look flashy enough for kids though :p
This reminds me of what I've done back in 1989 in Russia where I was on an international programming camp [0], which still exists today. I won, I believe, the second place. It was written in TPW (Turbo Pascal for Windows), of course!
This is awesome! It looks like a fantastic way to play with boolean logic and learn/teach how computers work. I love the ability to encapsulate circuits and abstract them into higher level components.
Readit News
It also comes with a memory and screen abstraction, which can increase performance further over hand-rolled memory and screens once you want that.
It doesn't have any encapsulation, though, which is odd since it compiles things anyway.
In addition to boolean logic, Logisim also includes more advanced components such as static RAM, as well as interesting things to drive with it, such as displays. It was developed for use in schools and is therefore designed to be easy to work (or rather play) with.
The project itself has been dead since 2011 or so, but there is an actively maintained fork [1].
[1]: https://github.com/logisim-evolution/logisim-evolution
https://www.falstad.com/circuit/circuitjs.html
If you go to e.g. Circuits -> Combinatorial Logic -> Full adder, you can see that digital logic is available too. (Uses a lot of CPU, so maybe reduce simulation speed and current speed. You don't need those for digital stuff.)
Maybe it doesn't look flashy enough for kids though :p
[0]: https://icccamp.ru/
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