[GLLUG] The Elements of Computing Systems (From NAND to Tetris)

Charles Ulrich charles at bityard.net
Tue Aug 30 22:17:04 EDT 2011


There's been some interest lately in free online college-level
courses. I ran across this one the other day and wanted to share it
with the group:

http://diycomputerscience.com/courses/course/the-elements-of-computing-systems

"The Elements of Computing Systems - is a course which takes a student
across the entire computing stack in a hands on manner. In this
course, students start with the primitive NAND gate, and using a
hardware simulator and HDL, they build basic gates, using which they
build an ALU (Arithmatic Logic Unit), going on to building an actual
computer (in simulation). Then they create an assembly language for
this computer, followed by a high level language, an operating system,
and finally a game using the language they created, on the machine
they created."

Highly recommended if you're at all interested in programming or are
simply curious how computers work. (And honestly, what would be more
awesome than writing Tetris on a computer that _you_ designed?)

Charles


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