Build a Modern Computer from First Principles: From Nand to Tetris

Build a Modern Computer from First Principles: From Nand to Tetris(coursera.org)

94 points by ravanpao 9 years ago | 17 comments

rkachowski 9 years ago |

Sadly it looks like the course stops at week 6 after the assembler has been implemented. The next steps in the book are to implement the VM, compiler and develop programs in the high level language you've implemented.

I started the book back in August and got as far as implementing the lexical analysis in the compiler, I was kinda hoping this course would give the the push to finish everything.

dx034 9 years ago | |

They say in the first video that the software part (from week 7) will follow in a second Coursera course.

ChrisRR 9 years ago | | |

I've been waiting for that second course for years now...

jwhitlark 9 years ago |

If you are self taught, you owe it to yourself to take this course. It's the best tie together class I've ever seen, and made a world of difference to me.

Note that this is one the first half of the coursework, I'm still waiting for the second part.

Seriously, if you're self taught, and have been writing code for a while, this and a great compiler course will take you to a new level.

ellius 9 years ago | |

I'm self-taught. This was the first book that actually answered my question "but how does it work?". I'd been getting incomplete and misguided answers for years when I finally stumbled across this book in an HN thread, and I was finally able to put the full picture together.

wccrawford 9 years ago |

I did a course based on this book a while back, and while I didn't quite finish it, I did get a lot of enjoyment from it.

I think I probably did it here. Or at least used this page as reference.

http://www.nand2tetris.org/course.php

bbayer 9 years ago |

For some background https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE7YRHxwoDs

throwaway2016a 9 years ago |

I had avery similar course to this in college. We build a 4-bit machine (with a very limited instruction set) from scratch (well from basic logic gates and RAM). For the final project grade the professor ran a test program through it and saw if the output matched what was expected.

We actually physically built it on a breadboard.

It was fun and I learned a lot. Hopefully this is a similar experience for those who take it.

ioseph 9 years ago |

Looks like an interesting course, though the submission process seems unpleasant compared to other courses I've taken in the past.

temp-defualt 9 years ago |

Amazing... I really love this course. I teach it to my students it is great!

busterarm 9 years ago |

I've been going through the book and it's been great fun so far.

Recommend!

fieryskiff 9 years ago |

Interesting. Anyone know if it's updated from [0]? Wonder if it'll just use the same Software. The book [1] was interesting.

[0] http://nand2tetris.org/

[1] https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Computing-Systems-Building-P...

guiambros 9 years ago | |

I finished it a couple of months ago. It uses the exact same structure and software as described in the book (HACK language, etc).

The included hands-on projects made it more fun and interesting. Basically you'll build a simple computer from the ground up, starting with flip-flops and going all the up up to ALU, memory and CPU.

The grader works well, so you can submit your code and it'll grade you in realtime. You can finish it in less than a month, if you have experience with electronics and Boolean logic.

Patrick_Devine 9 years ago | | |

I've gone through the book and got as far as building the computer, writing the assembler and running some programs on it. Does the course go beyond this? I haven't built the virtual machine or written the compiler, but it looked like from the description of the course, they didn't do that either.

ioseph 9 years ago | |

Looks like it's still the same course although with video lectures added

chairmanwow 9 years ago |

> Course by Hebrew University of Jerusalem

> Project 1 due December 25th