How Computers Work
15 boards, 18 lessons, 143 review questions, in 5 chapters. Read them in order. Each chapter builds on the one before.
Start here → Everything Is a Number (bits & bytes)
Contents
Part one · Foundations
1Bits and switches3 lessons
One trick: a switch that is on or off: made into numbers, real numbers, and the gates that add them, each with its byte-level close-up.
2The machine runs a program3 lessons
Fetch, decode, execute. The memory hierarchy. And how code becomes a stack of calls, traced to the instruction, the cache line and the stack frame.
3Many programs, one machine5 lessons
Processes, threads and the kernel, concurrency on real hardware, interrupts and the bus, and a capstone tracing a keypress to a pixel.
4Inside the operating system4 lessons
Virtual memory and the working set, the linker and the loader, whose turn the scheduler gives, and how a thread waits without burning a core.
Part two · Build
5Build the machine's software3 lessons
Three programs you write: a stack machine and its assembler, a Unix shell on fork, exec and pipes, and malloc grown into a garbage collector.
Borrowed from other tracks (2)
You don't need to take those tracks. These are the only lessons this track uses from them, and each is linked where it is needed.