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The Joy of Nand2Tetris

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Re: The Joy of Nand2Tetris

#21

Post by jamalaramala »

jgauth wrote: post #10
knowknow wrote: post #9

Having done nand2tetris before doing various digital logic courses, I feel like the first portion falls a little short of its tagline of making a computer from modern first principles. It focuses too much on the specific implementation of its own architecture rather than giving the tools needed to create the architecture from scratch. It doesn’t teach things such as product of sums and kmaps which allows you to metho…

Do you have a recommendation for a book or course that teaches these things better? In particular FSMs.

This Youtube channel has amazing explanations, starting with:

How Transistors Run Code?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HjneAhCy2N4

Re: The Joy of Nand2Tetris

#22

Post by cluckindan »

knowknow wrote: post #9

Having done nand2tetris before doing various digital logic courses, I feel like the first portion falls a little short of its tagline of making a computer from modern first principles. It focuses too much on the specific implementation of its own architecture rather than giving the tools needed to create the architecture from scratch. It doesn’t teach things such as product of sums and kmaps which allows you to metho…

These things used to be the basis of CS education 20 years ago. Are they not today?

Re: The Joy of Nand2Tetris

#23

Post by lordviet »

Both the course and the book are phenomenal. In my opinion they are up there as one of the best CS resources. I finished it two years ago and still think about it fairly often.

The compiler exercise is beyond excellent and cracking it feels like a milestone.

Re: The Joy of Nand2Tetris

#24

Post by aleph_minus_one »

maheart wrote: post #5

There's a gamified version of nand2tetris available on Steam called "Turing Complete" ( https://turingcomplete.game ). I completed it up until the assembler challenges, and I felt the same way as the author. Granted I knew Kmaps, etc. from my uni days, but given the nand2tetris book you might be able to figure it out.

> There's a gamified version of nand2tetris available on Steam called "Turing Complete" (https://turingcomplete.game).

Also have a look at MHRD, which is to my knowledge even more inspired by nand2tetris.

Re: The Joy of Nand2Tetris

#25

Post by mikewarot »

simgt wrote: post #7
WD-42 wrote: post #4

I’m interested in this. What it the best way to learn the material? The book? The coursera course? Both? It’s a bit hard to tell just from the website.

the nand2tetris book, Ben Eater's tutorials and nandgame

For me, NandGame[1] is a far better way to go. You get a much better hands-on feel of things when you can toggle the inputs yourself, and see how things work.

[1] https://nandgame.com/

Re: The Joy of Nand2Tetris

#26

Post by bnferguson »

dwedge wrote: post #11
maheart wrote: post #5

There's a gamified version of nand2tetris available on Steam called "Turing Complete" ( https://turingcomplete.game ). I completed it up until the assembler challenges, and I felt the same way as the author. Granted I knew Kmaps, etc. from my uni days, but given the nand2tetris book you might be able to figure it out.

That game is early access but hasn't been updated for 2 years so is probably going to stay that way. Is it compete enough?

Quite. I had a great Christmas break a couple years back going through all the missions. It has some edges to it but people have also implemented things like RISC-V in it so it's also quite complete. The game portion is enough for fun and exploration.

I got all the way to the final missions where you're writing your own assembly (that you created) to solve various programming puzzles. Only stopped because I got busy with something else and break was over. I def recommend it. Reminded me at the time of Code by Charles Petzold but applied.

(Last I checked the Author was rewriting much of it for performance reasons and to fix up a few gotchas that should be possible with circuits but aren't here - no idea if they still are but that was my understanding before)

Re: The Joy of Nand2Tetris

#27

Post by wodenokoto »

cluckindan wrote: post #22
knowknow wrote: post #9

Having done nand2tetris before doing various digital logic courses, I feel like the first portion falls a little short of its tagline of making a computer from modern first principles. It focuses too much on the specific implementation of its own architecture rather than giving the tools needed to create the architecture from scratch. It doesn’t teach things such as product of sums and kmaps which allows you to metho…

These things used to be the basis of CS education 20 years ago. Are they not today?

Why do you assume that OP has a computer science degree?

IT has always been a sector where you can have a degreeless career. Moreover, plenty of IT degrees are not computer science (data science degrees, to take a popular example)

Re: The Joy of Nand2Tetris

#28

Post by kamaal »

cluckindan wrote: post #22
knowknow wrote: post #9

Having done nand2tetris before doing various digital logic courses, I feel like the first portion falls a little short of its tagline of making a computer from modern first principles. It focuses too much on the specific implementation of its own architecture rather than giving the tools needed to create the architecture from scratch. It doesn’t teach things such as product of sums and kmaps which allows you to metho…

These things used to be the basis of CS education 20 years ago. Are they not today?

I did a bachelors degree in Electronics and Communication engineering. It was standard to watch things go from a diode, to transistor, to a flip flop, to a register, then 8/16/32 bit adders- Once here subtraction is just addition in 2's compliment. Multiplication is repeated addition, and division being repeated subtraction.

After this you immediately go and learn 8085, and then 8086

Re: The Joy of Nand2Tetris

#29

Post by signa11 »

jgauth wrote: post #10
knowknow wrote: post #9

Having done nand2tetris before doing various digital logic courses, I feel like the first portion falls a little short of its tagline of making a computer from modern first principles. It focuses too much on the specific implementation of its own architecture rather than giving the tools needed to create the architecture from scratch. It doesn’t teach things such as product of sums and kmaps which allows you to metho…

Do you have a recommendation for a book or course that teaches these things better? In particular FSMs.

there is “switching theory and finite automata” by zvi-kohavi, one of my prized possessions from an era long past.

Re: The Joy of Nand2Tetris

#30

Post by schmorptron »

dwedge wrote: post #11
maheart wrote: post #5

There's a gamified version of nand2tetris available on Steam called "Turing Complete" ( https://turingcomplete.game ). I completed it up until the assembler challenges, and I felt the same way as the author. Granted I knew Kmaps, etc. from my uni days, but given the nand2tetris book you might be able to figure it out.

That game is early access but hasn't been updated for 2 years so is probably going to stay that way. Is it compete enough?

I bought it to revise my intro to computer engineering course before the exam and it worked pretty well for that. Didn't hit any bugs and it also was content complete as far as I could tell
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