High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch • Hacker News Board

Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch

#61

Post by kriardol » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 5:19 PM UTC

Tichy wrote: post #56

Is it bad if I have mixed feelings about this? With such skills, why not invent something new? I think if I were to build some stuff from scratch, maybe I would try to build a gene assembler (whatever they called that thing, where you can feed a gene sequence into it and it assembles a real gene from it). That's something you can't buy in every supermarket yet.

I think there's a lot of understanding to gain from building a computer from scratch. We've abstracted computing so much that starting over gives you a unique perspective on some of the big problems still out there, as well as a definite appreciation for the innovations we've come up with--even if it's nothing new.

Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch

#62

Post by brianobush » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 5:58 PM UTC

palish wrote: post #37

brianobush wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Agreed, save the skipping college part. The debt incurred from college was paid off more than a decade ago. The gain from my education opened my mind and doors of opportunity. Even if you are smart, sometimes those doors will stay shut.

I'd like to know (for my own education), what were the benefits to you of going to college?

My major was CS and math for undergrad:

(1) in-depth knowledge of math, which has always been an asset. Those that don't go to college have issues here.

(2) met like-minded friends that were inspiring and most are quite successful now.

(3) allowed me to go to grad-school and specialize in machine learning. This specialty opened doors that ultimately resulted in company ownership (yes it ended well)

(4) personal satisfaction in knowing that I can finish something with long term vision. College is only four years, but when you are young it seems daunting.

Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch

#63

Post by Confusion » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 6:19 PM UTC

misuse-permit wrote: post #60

I'm sure it helps to have the right parents too. When I was in elementary school, I showed great curiosity for how our old Macintosh worked, but the internet wasn't around, there were no relevant books in the public library, and my parents didn't know jack-shit about computers. My point is, with the right upbringing, we would all be like this. I'd like to learn more about this kids childhood. I wonder if, like me, he…

On that tangent: I've always wondered how things would have turned out if my parents had been savvy enough to provide me with the right book, when it turned out I couldn't understand enough of the English (not my native language) BASIC manual that came with my dad's first PC somewhere mid-to-end-eighties (when I was However, I don't think any advantages in that regard detract from this achievement. Even if our parents had nudged us in the right direction, we may have been content doing many 'half' programs. Technical abilities are independent of the persistence required for a larger project such as this (or beginning a startup, for what that is concerned!).

Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch

#64

Post by zeteo » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 9:34 PM UTC

JonnieCache wrote: post #53

zeteo wrote: post #2

By some definition of "scratch", we've also built 8-bit computers from scratch in my Electronics class. My respect for this student's accomplishment is proportional to how much of the processor he has designed and built himself; opcode design and management is a highly nontrivial task. On the other hand, if he has built the processor from pre-existing schematics, the accomplishment simply shows a steady soldering han…

I think you guys should look a little closer before writing him off. He pumped the OS in one bit at a time using DIP switches, wrote his own hex editor, and then wrote his own assembler and emulator , in javascript/canvas: http://web.mac.com/teisenmann/iWeb/adeptpage/adept_compiler.... The OS code is here: http://web.mac.com/teisenmann/iWeb/adeptpage/DUO_OS.txt Run it through the emulator, it works. Definitely not ju…

His enthusiasm and tenacity are admirable, but he still has a lot to learn (and the "this guy is smarter than anyone else" hype in the article is overblown). That's not an OS, it's a rudimentary shell and a couple of simple programs that can be called from it. To anyone who has ever taken an operating systems class (where you usually do have to write your own OS), it's quite obvious that he hasn't even begun to tackle the kind of problems that real OSs deal with.

Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch

#65

Post by __rkaup__ » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 10:12 PM UTC

brianobush wrote: post #62

palish wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd like to know (for my own education), what were the benefits to you of going to college?

My major was CS and math for undergrad: (1) in-depth knowledge of math, which has always been an asset. Those that don't go to college have issues here. (2) met like-minded friends that were inspiring and most are quite successful now. (3) allowed me to go to grad-school and specialize in machine learning. This specialty opened doors that ultimately resulted in company ownership (yes it ended well) (4) personal satis…

4 years is always a huge fraction of your life.

Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch

#66

Post by conradev » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 10:54 PM UTC

slunk wrote: post #50

tetrarchy wrote: post #35

Wow, tough crowd here. When I was in high school, the extent of my computer knowledge was a little visual basic. After watching all of his videos, I'm extremely impressed - it looks like he designed (or at least integrated) a lot of the hardware, operating systems, and applications himself. After a BS and now almost a MS in computer engineering I think I could (...eventually) pull something like this off, but this gu…

"Wow, tough crowd here." Yeah, no kidding. I just graduated from a computer engineering program and I still find this impressive, especially for a high school student. What could I do with a computer right out of high school? Code some java or c++ (poorly) and install linux on it? That's about it.

Not speaking against this kid in particular, what he did was cool, but there are plenty of high school kids who can write professional quality code (in a multitude of languages) and know a lot about the internals of a computer. Speaking from experience, its annoying when age becomes a matter of importance.

Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch

#67

Post by dlo » Sat, Jun 18, 2011, 11:07 PM UTC

Will_Price wrote: post #47

tmesis wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What course number was that? Is it on OCW?

I'd also like to know if it's on OCW, would be very interesting.

Here you go!

http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-comput...

Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch

#68

Post by slunk » Sun, Jun 19, 2011, 2:14 AM UTC

conradev wrote: post #66

slunk wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Wow, tough crowd here." Yeah, no kidding. I just graduated from a computer engineering program and I still find this impressive, especially for a high school student. What could I do with a computer right out of high school? Code some java or c++ (poorly) and install linux on it? That's about it.

Not speaking against this kid in particular, what he did was cool, but there are plenty of high school kids who can write professional quality code (in a multitude of languages) and know a lot about the internals of a computer. Speaking from experience, its annoying when age becomes a matter of importance.

It might just be the high school I attended but I can only think of one kid out of about 3000 in the entire school who was intimidatingly competent with computers. I can see where you're coming from. Making too big of a deal out of his age might be annoying to some people but with age comes experience and all the anecdotal evidence at my disposal says that most high schoolers don't have this experience yet. :/

Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch

#69

Post by slunk » Sun, Jun 19, 2011, 2:21 AM UTC

slunk wrote: post #68

conradev wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not speaking against this kid in particular, what he did was cool, but there are plenty of high school kids who can write professional quality code (in a multitude of languages) and know a lot about the internals of a computer. Speaking from experience, its annoying when age becomes a matter of importance.

It might just be the high school I attended but I can only think of one kid out of about 3000 in the entire school who was intimidatingly competent with computers. I can see where you're coming from. Making too big of a deal out of his age might be annoying to some people but with age comes experience and all the anecdotal evidence at my disposal says that most high schoolers don't have this experience yet. :/

To be clear, the reason why I find this impressive is because I would assume it implies a significant amount of studying in his free time since computer architecture isn't exactly standard high school curriculum.

Re: High school grad builds 8-bit computer from scratch

#70

Post by kragen » Sun, Jun 19, 2011, 4:34 AM UTC

The instruction set looks pretty nice — a small but practical set of opcodes and a 6502-like zero page to simplify instruction encoding and address calculation.

The article is pretty bad. For me, http://web.mac.com/teisenmann/iWeb/adeptpage/menu.html is much better, although it doesn't contextualize the project as well as it might.