Computers Can Be Understood

(blog.nelhage.com)

6 points | by birdculture 11 hours ago ago

5 comments

  • tocs3 11 hours ago ago

    https://www.nand2tetris.org/ has been my favorite "computers are not magic" course for a long time. It is a much more hardware oriented program than this post though.

  • measurablefunc 11 hours ago ago

    Understanding is one of those things that is very tricky to actually pin down. I don't actually think anyone truly understands how modern computer networks really work. We have abstractions for making sense of computers but every time there is a widespread outage of some critical software/hardware system is an indication of the fact that these systems are now too complicated for anyone to really understand. If people truly understood computers then we wouldn't have so many outages.

  • mekod 11 hours ago ago

    trivially true

    • tocs3 11 hours ago ago

      trivially true

      But not widely accepted / understood / appreciated.

      • mekod 11 hours ago ago

        Accepted in theory, ignored in practice..