The first part shows how to design an unoptimized and simplistic, but complete and working 16-bit CPU and RAM from logic gates.
The second part builds a whole software stack on top of it using a virtual stack-based VM:
- CPU assembler;
- a (AOT) compiler from the VM opcodes
into the CPU assembly;
- a compiler from the high-level language
called Jack (an educational mix of Java/C
with many complex parts removed) into the
VM opcodes;
- a standard library for the Jack language
(Screen/Keyboard/Output/Math/String/Array/
Sys/Memory classes), including writing your own
memory allocator and drawing lines/circles
and bitmapping glyphs into video memory
for text rendering;
- your own project (usually a simple game and
sometimes marvels like [0]) written in Jack
on top of all of that;
The courses are definitely very challenging and some previous exposure to the topics is desired.
I'm sure part 2 is great as well, I've only had time to do the first part so only wanted to speak to that. The way it jumps up and down the hardware stack is a very good tool from a pedagogy standpoint - doing assembly language before the CPU really informs why we want the CPU to be set up in the way it is.
Seconded, with part 2. I didn’t major in compsci, so I had never learned how computers work in any deep sense, and this was really eye opening. It takes you through how to build a cpu and then how a succession of binary instructions produces interesting behavior, and then how you can layer abstractions on top, like assembly language and stack operations, and then how to compile code down to those binary instructions and what has to happen at the OS level for this code to run.
It’s also opened my eyes to how much more I still have to learn!
