
Build a Modern Computer from First Principles: From Nand to Tetris - ravanpao
https://www.coursera.org/learn/build-a-computer
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rkachowski
Sadly it looks like the course stops at week 6 after the assembler has been
implemented. The next steps in the book are to implement the VM, compiler and
develop programs in the high level language you've implemented.

I started the book back in August and got as far as implementing the lexical
analysis in the compiler, I was kinda hoping this course would give the the
push to finish everything.

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dx034
They say in the first video that the software part (from week 7) will follow
in a second Coursera course.

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ChrisRR
I've been waiting for that second course for years now...

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jwhitlark
If you are self taught, you owe it to yourself to take this course. It's the
best tie together class I've ever seen, and made a world of difference to me.

Note that this is one the first half of the coursework, I'm still waiting for
the second part.

Seriously, if you're self taught, and have been writing code for a while, this
and a great compiler course will take you to a new level.

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ellius
I'm self-taught. This was the first book that actually answered my question
"but how does it work?". I'd been getting incomplete and misguided answers for
years when I finally stumbled across this book in an HN thread, and I was
finally able to put the full picture together.

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wccrawford
I did a course based on this book a while back, and while I didn't _quite_
finish it, I did get a lot of enjoyment from it.

I think I probably did it here. Or at least used this page as reference.

[http://www.nand2tetris.org/course.php](http://www.nand2tetris.org/course.php)

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bbayer
For some background
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE7YRHxwoDs](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iE7YRHxwoDs)

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throwaway2016a
I had avery similar course to this in college. We build a 4-bit machine (with
a very limited instruction set) from scratch (well from basic logic gates and
RAM). For the final project grade the professor ran a test program through it
and saw if the output matched what was expected.

We actually physically built it on a breadboard.

It was fun and I learned a lot. Hopefully this is a similar experience for
those who take it.

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ioseph
Looks like an interesting course, though the submission process seems
unpleasant compared to other courses I've taken in the past.

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temp-defualt
Amazing... I really love this course. I teach it to my students it is great!

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busterarm
I've been going through the book and it's been great fun so far.

Recommend!

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fieryskiff
Interesting. Anyone know if it's updated from [0]? Wonder if it'll just use
the same Software. The book [1] was interesting.

[0] [http://nand2tetris.org/](http://nand2tetris.org/)

[1] [https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Computing-Systems-
Building-P...](https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Computing-Systems-Building-
Principles/dp/0262640686/)

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guiambros
I finished it a couple of months ago. It uses the exact same structure and
software as described in the book (HACK language, etc).

The included hands-on projects made it more fun and interesting. Basically
you'll build a simple computer from the ground up, starting with flip-flops
and going all the up up to ALU, memory and CPU.

The grader works well, so you can submit your code and it'll grade you in
realtime. You can finish it in less than a month, if you have experience with
electronics and Boolean logic.

~~~
Patrick_Devine
I've gone through the book and got as far as building the computer, writing
the assembler and running some programs on it. Does the course go beyond this?
I haven't built the virtual machine or written the compiler, but it looked
like from the description of the course, they didn't do that either.

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dan1234
According to the Nand2Tetris site[0], this is just part 1 and only covers
chapters 1-6. Part 2 will cover chapters 7-12 but looks to be still in
development.

[0][http://nand2tetris.org/](http://nand2tetris.org/)

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chairmanwow
> Course by Hebrew University of Jerusalem

> Project 1 due December 25th

