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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

#61

Post by de_nied »

JonathonW wrote: post #36
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 c…

>This book follows more along the lines of the coursework for a computer engineering degree than a computer science degree

> but CS curricula generally completely omit the electrical engineering portions

Where in this book does it talk about electrical engineering?

Re: The Elements of Computing Systems, Second Edition

#63

Post by ottod »

My girls, then aged 10 and 12, made it through the Coursera ECS first course. They are not geniuses, but the material is stellar. I helped them in a couple of assignments. They enjoyed it, even tough not one of them went the STEM route. They became the smart artsy young women that make art and music with computers.

Re: The Elements of Computing Systems, Second Edition

#64

Post by crispyalmond »

Jtsummers wrote: post #58
crispyalmond wrote: post #56

Is there any place to purchase a digital copy of this? I want to read it, but don't like paper copies. Besides the kindle edition, I'm looking for an ePUB or PDF mostly.

The current edition can be read for free, check the "Projects" section, at https://www.nand2tetris.org/course . There is also the Kindle version of the current edition.

This is awesome. Thanks for sharing!

Re: The Elements of Computing Systems, Second Edition

#65

Post by kolbe »

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.

I had sort of the opposite experience. The book was really fun, but it felt a lot more like I learned how to play some abstracted low-level game. It just didn't do much to actually inform me about how a modern CPU actually works.

Re: The Elements of Computing Systems, Second Edition

#66

Post by vmilner »

Jtsummers wrote: post #52
Koshkin wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen books suffer from the "second-system syndrome." http://www.neilgunton.com/doc/?o=1mr&doc_id=8583

I wonder what might be some good examples of that. IME, it's mostly been college textbooks which suffer from being refreshed for the sake of encouraging new purchases (killing the used market), often by someone other than the original authors and editors. Of course, some AD&D fans would say everything past 2nd edition might be an example of it.

Dawkins believes Darwin's "Origin of Species" suffered from that as later editions bowed somewhat to religious pressure.

Re: The Elements of Computing Systems, Second Edition

#68

Post by Jtsummers »

Koshkin wrote: post #59
Jtsummers wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what might be some good examples of that. IME, it's mostly been college textbooks which suffer from being refreshed for the sake of encouraging new purchases (killing the used market), often by someone other than the original authors and editors. Of course, some AD&D fans would say everything past 2nd edition might be an example of it.

> past 2nd edition Case in point: the vomit-inducing colorful print of the 3rd edition of Axler's Linear Algebra Done Right .

Hah. I actually had two linear algebra texts in college, both ostensibly by the same author (I can't recall now who it was so can't verify the later edition was actually by the same man and didn't reuse his name). One was my mother's in college some time in 1976-1980, the other was mine from some time in 2000-2004. If it weren't for the exercises, I'd have only used hers because it was a much clearer text, it was also less than half the size (overall smaller in every dimension: shorter, narrower, and thinner).

Re: The Elements of Computing Systems, Second Edition

#69

Post by fantod »

bmitc wrote: post #55
fantod wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not when I took it! I did most of those assignments in Haskell (a choice I came to regret). Double-checking and it seems the grader supports the following languages: C, C++, C#, Elixir, Erlang, Go, Haskell, Java, Lua, Node.js, Perl, PHP, Python 2.7, Python 3, Ruby, Rust, Scala, Swift.

Oh really? I was going off their own FAQ since the graded items requiring paying, and I didn’t want to do it if I couldn’t use the languages I wanted, namely F# and Racket. From the FAQ: > > Which programming language do I have to use in order to complete the assignments in this course? > We expect learners to submit assignments in any version of Java, or Python. We will assume that you have basic programming ability…

Yeah, I guess the FAQ is out of date. Think you should be to sign up for free if you want to check for yourself. I highly recommend it! And F# would be a pretty great language for this course, I think. Looks like no Racket (or any Lisp) support, though.
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