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I'm 17 and wrote this guide on how CPUs run programs

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Re: I'm 17 and wrote this guide on how CPUs run programs

#121

Post by corbet »

archmaster wrote: post #14

Hi! I'm Lexi, I wrote this article/mini-book. There's a classic question of "what happens when you load a website?", but I've always been more interested in "what happens when you run a program?". About 3 months ago, I was really annoyed at myself for not knowing how to answer that question so I decided to teach myself. I taught myself everything else I know in programming, so this should be easy, right? NOPE! Appare…

I can't resist pointing out that LWN (https://lwn.net/) has been dedicated, for many years, to the production of operating-system information that is not terrible. Have a look, and perhaps consider joining us :)

Re: I'm 17 and wrote this guide on how CPUs run programs

#122

Post by replwoacause »

archmaster wrote: post #14

Hi! I'm Lexi, I wrote this article/mini-book. There's a classic question of "what happens when you load a website?", but I've always been more interested in "what happens when you run a program?". About 3 months ago, I was really annoyed at myself for not knowing how to answer that question so I decided to teach myself. I taught myself everything else I know in programming, so this should be easy, right? NOPE! Appare…

This is beautiful work. You have a very bright future ahead.

Re: I'm 17 and wrote this guide on how CPUs run programs

#123

Post by needlesslygrim »

As a fellow (very nearly) 17 year old, good job! :^) Just 20 minutes ago I was trying to figure out how to extract the first byte of a 16 bit integer and finding out about Endianness, and you're writing a whole book about CPUs! I'll make sure to read this once I've finished Crafting Interpreters, although it may take a while since progress with that has certainly slowed down (as it does with many of my other projects lol).

Re: I'm 17 and wrote this guide on how CPUs run programs

#124

Post by EGreg »

archmaster wrote: post #14

Hi! I'm Lexi, I wrote this article/mini-book. There's a classic question of "what happens when you load a website?", but I've always been more interested in "what happens when you run a program?". About 3 months ago, I was really annoyed at myself for not knowing how to answer that question so I decided to teach myself. I taught myself everything else I know in programming, so this should be easy, right? NOPE! Appare…

I love it! And also the natural humor that comes with writing as a 17-year-old. When I was your age I wrote this column of articles on FlipCode, about game development:

https://www.flipcode.com/tpractice/

(If you check it out, I’d love to know your opinions).

Also, I wonder what are your local state laws about hiring a 17-year-old to work on open source stuff as an intern. I checked out your github and think you might enjoy part-time discovering what we build. Here is the codebase: https://github.com/Qbix/Platform

Re: I'm 17 and wrote this guide on how CPUs run programs

#125

Post by iancmceachern »

archmaster wrote: post #14

Hi! I'm Lexi, I wrote this article/mini-book. There's a classic question of "what happens when you load a website?", but I've always been more interested in "what happens when you run a program?". About 3 months ago, I was really annoyed at myself for not knowing how to answer that question so I decided to teach myself. I taught myself everything else I know in programming, so this should be easy, right? NOPE! Appare…

This attitude and ability to execute on your vision will serve you well. Excellent work, stay awesome

Re: I'm 17 and wrote this guide on how CPUs run programs

#126

Post by dellorter »

makeworld wrote: post #42
skizm wrote: post #18

Meta point: I'm curious of people's thoughts when OPs in general post "I'm N years old..." or "I'm a blind programmer who..." before posting something unrelated to their life situation. Personally I think this falls into the "girls do not exist on the internet" rule of thumb. No reason to state that you're a girl (or 12 years old or whatever) other than to prime people to look upon your writing with lower standards.…

What do you mean "rule of thumb"? That's just an old meme making fun of how most Internet users were male. It's not about how you shouldn't mention gender. If gender is never mentioned, maleness is assumed all the time, and then male users will not realize the abilities of their female peers.

I think something valuable is lost if everyone must present irrelevant identity information to combat false assumptions some may hold. At least for the crowd who want to primarily be associated with attributes that can be merited to their choosing.

Re: I'm 17 and wrote this guide on how CPUs run programs

#128

Post by dghughes »

Going down the Rabbit Hole is fun for any subject you learn a lot. For electronics I went down the hole power, current and voltage, EMF, magnetism, ferromagnetic metals, domains (as in magnetic area no networking i.e. electron alignment), virtual electrons, physics, quantum mechanics...

Similar for computers you see the high level stuff but then you can go right down to the wire level where bits are voltages +5/-5/0V and clock timing.

Although being too curious can be bad thing. You have to know when to stop or where to start. I think we've all heard stories of people troubleshooting who are very intelligent. They're tearing into a problem down to the hardware level or going over code line by line when all they needed to do was reboot.

Re: I'm 17 and wrote this guide on how CPUs run programs

#129

Post by zerohp »

Const-me wrote: post #101
mgaunard wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I haven't done the research, but I can't believe most of the information could be that hard to find or wrong, at least if you know where to look. These sorts of topics are usually well-covered in the matching undergraduate-level computer science courses (computer architecture and operating systems, which, these days, are mostly optional since out of fashion). Several universities have free courses available, and some…

I share the OP’s opinion that a lot of available information is incorrect. It seems the industry is moving faster than the academics who write books and university courses can update these sources. Big endian CPUs, CPU architectures other than AMD64 and ARM, x87 FPU, are examples of the topics which are no longer relevant. However, these topics are well covered because they were still relevant couple decades ago when…

> However, the details of modern branch predictors are proprietary, so we don’t have authoritative sources on them.

I focused on Computer Architecture for a masters degree and now I work on a CPU design team. While I cannot say what we use due to NDA, I will say that it is not proprietary. Very nearly everything, including the branch predictors, in modern CPUs can be found in academic research.

Many of these secrets are easily found in the reading list for a graduate-level computer architecture course. Implementation details vary but usually not by too much.

Re: I'm 17 and wrote this guide on how CPUs run programs

#130

Post by mckirk »

dghughes wrote: post #128

Going down the Rabbit Hole is fun for any subject you learn a lot. For electronics I went down the hole power, current and voltage, EMF, magnetism, ferromagnetic metals, domains (as in magnetic area no networking i.e. electron alignment), virtual electrons, physics, quantum mechanics... Similar for computers you see the high level stuff but then you can go right down to the wire level where bits are voltages +5/-5/0V…

Are there any pointers you could share on what would be a good way to go down the electronics rabbit hole? I'm great with software, but still often notice a glaring lack of knowledge when it comes to hardware topics.
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