nand2tetris class

[Stephen Warren]

I'll be teaching "nand2tetris" at FCCH starting in January. Check out
the first meetup entry:

http://www.meetup.com/Fort-Collins-Creator-Hub/events/227145644/

Please do spread the word to anyone who might be interested.



http://www.nand2tetris.org/

nand2tetris aims to tie together all aspects of computer system design,
from low-level logic gates all the way up to application programs. The
idea is that by understanding a little about each piece of the system,
you'll be able to better understand how each part supports the overall
needs of the system, and how the "upper" layers make use of the features
of the lower levels.

I should mention that the first half of the course doesn't rely on much
background knowledge other than basic math. I believe it would be
interesting even to those without much (or perhaps any) computing
experience. However, once the course moves up to the software levels,
the projects rather assume you already know how to program. The course
aims to teach the interactions between low-level software, operating
systems, virtual machines, and operating systems, rather than being a
"how to program" course.

nand2tetris is a 12-module course; each module typically consisting of a
lecture (roughly 1 hour I think) and a workshop/lab to work on the
associated project. I'll start out assuming we'll do one module each
week, with the session being a brief review of the previous project,
followed by the next module's lecture and time to work on the project.
We can tweak this process as we go along, e.g. if we need more
face-to-face time working on the labs, or if people are interested in
additional lectures that drill deeper into some topics as we go.

This meetup is free and open to the public. You'll get the most out of
the course if you can work on the labs at home as well as during our lab
time. As such, having your own laptop/computer (Linux, Windows, or Mac)
would be useful. If not, you should be able to use one of FCCH's laptops
during the scheduled meetup times. You'd want a USB memory stick to
store your project files in this case.

If you can RSVP via the meetup, that'd be useful to keep track of
numbers; hopefully we'll have enough space to accomodate everyone. This
is a series of related talks, so it makes most sense if you intend to
attend all the meetups, rather than dropping in/out as we go along.

You may find it useful to purchase the course book; see
http://www.nand2tetris.org/book.php. I have one copy I can loan out or
leave at the Creator Hub for people to review.