Book cover of The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles

Book description

A textbook with a hands-on approach that leads students through the gradual construction of a complete and working computer system including the hardware platform and the software hierarchy.

In the early days of computer science, the interactions of hardware, software, compilers, and operating system were simple enough to allow students…

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Why read it?

1 author picked The Elements of Computing Systems as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Before I read this book, I knew a bunch of facts about the different pieces of computer systems. After I read it, I understood how those pieces fit together. Building all those pieces myself, starting from the simplest logic gates and working my way up, made some fundamental concepts finally click—like how a processor decodes an instruction.

I especially loved the book’s hands-on structure: each chapter is a project where you get a specification and test suite for the component you need to build, but you have to figure out exactly how to build it for yourself. Completing the projects…

If you love The Elements of Computing Systems...

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December on 5C4 by Adam Strassberg,

Magical realism meets the magic of Christmas in this mix of Jewish, New Testament, and Santa stories–all reenacted in an urban psychiatric hospital!

On locked ward 5C4, Josh, a patient with many similarities to Jesus, is hospitalized concurrently with Nick, a patient with many similarities to Santa. The two argue…

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