______     __  __     ______     __    __  ______     ______    __
/\  ___\   /\ \/ /    /\  __ \   /\ \  / / /\  __ \   /\__  _\  /\ \
\ \___  \  \ \  _'-.  \ \ \/\ \  \ \ \/ /  \ \  __ \  \/_/\ \/  \ \ \
 \/\_____\  \ \_\ \_\  \ \_____\  \ \__/    \ \_\ \_\    \ \_\   \ \_\
  \/_____/   \/_/\/_/   \/_____/   \/_/      \/_/\/_/     \/_/    \/_/

Grokking Computers: Chapter 0 - Introduction

Mar 16, 2023 grokking-computers

Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.

- Arthur C. Clarke

Here begins a journey into the innerworkings of computers. This will be a (roughly) six part series explaining computers from first princples—transistors to the internet. An estimate table of contents follows:

• Ch 0: Introduction
• Ch 1: Electricity and Information
• Ch 2: Silicon, Transistors, and Digital Logic
• Ch 3: CPUs and Instructions
• Ch 4: Programming Languages
• Ch 5: Operating Systems and Software
• Ch 6: Networking and the Internet

Modern computers consist of billions of parts doing billions of operations every second. Eletrical and Computer Engineers handle the immense complexity of these marvels using one main tool: abstraction. This is the idea that the complexity of the innerworkings of some system can be wrapped by a simple external-facing interface, such that the user of said interface need not worry about the internals of the system. An example of this is the automobile;

It should be noted in advance that each chapter is just the tip of the iceberg for each of these topics; one would need several PhDs

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