Time for more computer science studying with NAND2Tetris! Yesterday I read chapter 2 of The Elements of Computing Systems (PDF) and today I watched the video lectures on Coursera and started building the second project.
The video lectures were alright. They helped me review what I had read in the book yesterday. But I did feel a bit lost when they got to the part about converting decimal numbers into binary. How am I supposed to know how to break up any number into factors of 2?! Hmm. Trial and error, I guess. That was a neat trick, actually.
Then I started implementing the chips – first on paper, then in the hardware simulator:
- Half adder: 6 min
- Full adder: 8 min
- 16-bit adder: 6 min
- Incrementer: 7 min
These were so easy, I wondered if maybe I had actually done this before and forgotten about it! In any case, it was fun! The first project seemed to take an eternity to complete, so this was refreshing.
I still have yet to do the main part of the project, though: the arithmetic logical unit (ALU)! So I have that challenge to look forward to.
Questions
- What’s the best technique for converting decimal into binary?
Learning summary (#TIL)
- Implemented the half adder, full adder, 16-bit adder and incrementer!
- Learned a technique for converting decimal numbers into binary.
Next steps
- Finish building the second project.
Time breakdown
- Study time: 1 hour 27 min
- Watching NAND2Tetris videos: 1 hour
- Building project 2: 27 min