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The Elements of Computing Systems, Second Edition

mitpress.mit.edu

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Re: The Elements of Computing Systems, Second Edition

#31

Post by AtlasBarfed »

bogomipz wrote: post #22
AtlasBarfed wrote: post #20

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?

It was 1995... so the Comp Org was Tanenbaum's Structured Computer Organization. I also used his Operating Systems book in the OS class. I thought they were excellent but I also had great profs.

I'll try to find my theory of computation text so I can see who wrote that, but again that was a great prof that walked through it really well.

Alas my bias against lisp may solely be traced to the Programming Languages prof that loved Scheme but couldn't actually communicate with humans. He could recite pi to 100 decimal places and was esteemed as brilliant but literally couldn't form sentences when talking to students. I suspect the lambda calculus would have been a good insight as well, but oh well.

Re: The Elements of Computing Systems, Second Edition

#32

Post by abecedarius »

ryanklee wrote: post #13
jpochtar wrote: post #5

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.

"This second edition has been extensively revised. It has been restructured into two distinct parts—part I, Hardware, and part II, Software—with six projects in each part. All chapters and projects have been rewritten, with an emphasis on separating abstraction from implementation, and many new sections, figures, and examples have been added. Substantial new appendixes offer focused presentation on technical and theo…

Wasn't the first edition also in two parts (hardware then software) and with an emphasis on separating abstraction from implementation? That's how I remember it.

Re: The Elements of Computing Systems, Second Edition

#33

Post by bear8642 »

AtlasBarfed wrote: post #31
bogomipz wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>"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?

It was 1995... so the Comp Org was Tanenbaum's Structured Computer Organization. I also used his Operating Systems book in the OS class. I thought they were excellent but I also had great profs. I'll try to find my theory of computation text so I can see who wrote that, but again that was a great prof that walked through it really well. Alas my bias against lisp may solely be traced to the Programming Languages prof…

Sounds like you had an excellent romp = was scheme taught with SICP?

Lambda calculus' anonymous functions are fairly simple but massively powerful - try this page? https://www.inf.fu-berlin.de/lehre/WS03/alpi/lambda.pdf>

Re: The Elements of Computing Systems, Second Edition

#34

Post by mhh__ »

jpochtar wrote: post #5

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.

When you've done that read Ulrich Drepper's piece on memory - it's tough but this is what sets you apart from a cowboy (not so much the section on DRAM pinouts, but the whole thing)

Re: The Elements of Computing Systems, Second Edition

#35

Post by mhh__ »

surajrmal wrote: post #30
anyekwest wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. After reading this book I realized that I didn't understand shit about computers before. Wondering what the second edition adds.

I feel like computer science degrees rarely get into much of the hardware beyond some basic assembly. You might have benefitted from taking some computer engineering courses which cover the topics in this book in much greater detail.

> basic assembly

Even some people actually working on compilers still talk about pipeline stalls in a ye olde pentium/RISC sense rather than the out of order monsters we have today.

Re: The Elements of Computing Systems, Second Edition

#36

Post by JonathonW »

jpochtar wrote: post #5

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.

This book follows more along the lines of the coursework for a computer engineering degree than a computer science degree-- especially at institutions where CS lives under the math or IT department as opposed to the engineering department.

There can be a lot of overlap between the two, particularly on the software side of things, but CS curricula generally completely omit the electrical engineering portions of a CE curriculum, and that's where ECS puts its focus.

Re: The Elements of Computing Systems, Second Edition

#40

Post by krisgee »

surajrmal wrote: post #30
anyekwest wrote: post #7

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. After reading this book I realized that I didn't understand shit about computers before. Wondering what the second edition adds.

I feel like computer science degrees rarely get into much of the hardware beyond some basic assembly. You might have benefitted from taking some computer engineering courses which cover the topics in this book in much greater detail.

Interesting my CS degree had a required introductory Computer Engineering course which itself had a pre-req first year course where we learned digital logic (among other stuff).

We didn't go quite as far as this book seems to but definitly got a decent grounding in how computers actually do their thing before it was back to theory.

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