21–30 of 101 posts
How similar is this book to CODE by Charles Petzold? I loved that book because it progressively builds up an imaginary computer using very easy to understand concepts. Even non-technical people can read it to understand how computers work internally.
As others have commented, the original book was one of those little gems that once you read, you realise how blind you were before, and it is extremely accessible. Often material is either too abstract or far too detailed, ECS managed to find the perfect balance where someone with a CS background can drill down to transistors and come back upwards again and really understand where they are going on that journey.
I didn't use this one, but my Computer Organization class which did gates -> circuits -> cpu -> microcode -> assembly was the lightbulb that allowed me to attempt to deconstruct everything to at least the gate level if I had to and made me much more comfortable with computer science and software in general. The only thing that rivaled that lightbulb was aspects of Theory of Computation with undecidability, turing mac…
Might you or someone else have a title that you would recommend for this that is the equivalent of a "Elements of Computing Systems" style book?
How similar is this book to CODE by Charles Petzold? I loved that book because it progressively builds up an imaginary computer using very easy to understand concepts. Even non-technical people can read it to understand how computers work internally.
As others have commented, the original book was one of those little gems that once you read, you realise how blind you were before, and it is extremely accessible. Often material is either too abstract or far too detailed, ECS managed to find the perfect balance where someone with a CS background can drill down to transistors and come back upwards again and really understand where they are going on that journey.
I didn't use this one, but my Computer Organization class which did gates -> circuits -> cpu -> microcode -> assembly was the lightbulb that allowed me to attempt to deconstruct everything to at least the gate level if I had to and made me much more comfortable with computer science and software in general. The only thing that rivaled that lightbulb was aspects of Theory of Computation with undecidability, turing mac…
Regardless, you'd need a different book or course to get what you're asking for in your last paragraph as that changes the scope and target of the book radically.
In July.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I didn't use this one, but my Computer Organization class which did gates -> circuits -> cpu -> microcode -> assembly was the lightbulb that allowed me to attempt to deconstruct everything to at least the gate level if I had to and made me much more comfortable with computer science and software in general. The only thing that rivaled that lightbulb was aspects of Theory of Computation with undecidability, turing mac…
>"The only thing that rivaled that lightbulb was aspects of Theory of Computation with undecidability, turing machine vs stack machine vs state machine powers that theoretically limit Von Neumann architecture." Might you or someone else have a title that you would recommend for this that is the equivalent of a "Elements of Computing Systems" style book?
The one we used was Introduction to the Theory of Computation by Michael Sipser (not hard to find a pdf online).
Does anybody know something about the main differences to the first edition? Is it the same HACK computer (and stack, with assembler, high-level language, etc.), or did they change that? The original architecture had some caveats - e.g. no external interrupt capability, so IO was implemented using busy polling and inspection specific IO-mapped memory regions (I don't blame them, as it made the book more concise and y…
How similar is this book to CODE by Charles Petzold? I loved that book because it progressively builds up an imaginary computer using very easy to understand concepts. Even non-technical people can read it to understand how computers work internally.
Gah! So mad I just bought the first edition!
Buy this book if you're a programmer who wants to know how computers work. I read the first edition in high school, and if I had to choose either this book or my entire undergrad CS education, I'd pick this book.
Seriously. After reading this book I realized that I didn't understand shit about computers before. Wondering what the second edition adds.