I'm a math dropout, now self-taught software engineer who has been spending the summer filling in gaps in my CS education. Programming language implementation finally started to click for me -- bytecode interpreters and compilers are much less intimidating for me than they were several months ago. And now having implemented my own (toy) interpreters, I'm interested for the first time in understanding some of the nitty gritty details of how hardware components work. So I started working through the nand2tetris projects and tinkering with breadboards, and wow. This stuff is so much fun! I'm bummed I didn't start sooner
I never really imagined I would be interested in this stuff, much less find it kind of beautiful. Pure math brain, if you aren't careful, can train you to view anything applied with disdain, and something as earthy as hardware even moreso. But it's kind of beautiful how there are deep and inevitable connections between some of the most abstract theory computer science has to offer (plt, pl design and implementation) and the way physical objects are harnessed for computation. I guess if you consider that von Neumann was a mathematician first and foremost then it starts to make more sense
Either way, I'm having a great time -- definitely recommend anyone in a similar position learn this stuff whenever you're ready for it
Nand2tetris[0] is hands down the best course I took in my CS BSc, Nissan and Shocken did such a wonderful job making this great content accessible. It was a fun and rewarding experience in which I built a toy computer bottom-up from scratch.
Share more about your journey. These days I am feeling to having an interest rising about such things. Picked Codes book one night and got really hooked up.
I opened this thinking I was the target audience - a longtime developer who has always wanted to get into electronics. However, this first paragraph...
> In order to present our paradigm in learning electronics, we can take an example of a full adder chip
that enables binary addition. Let us use a top-down approach, and look at the datasheet of the TTL
(Transistor-Transistor Logic) chip 7483. We will immediately notice that the chip performs the addition of
two 4-bit binary words, A and B.
...and the associated diagram, just immediately left me feeling like I was standing in a room full of people who were smarter than me. Is this really where one starts while learning basic electronics?
I think this is mostly poor writing on the part of the author. You being able to "immediately notice" is contingent upon having read the data sheet, which was not linked nor reproduced, but the way it was presented made it seem like the diagram was sufficient. If you were to have read the data sheet, it would have stated up front that the circuit performs four-bit addition. But the page did not facilitate that...
If you look up a data sheet for any 7483 variant, it is immediately notable: the first lines are something like "4-bit binary full adder" and the description says "…accept two 4-bit binary words" If you skip to the next paragraph, you’ll see they are onto transistors. Ideally the author could show a data sheet, but there may be reasons they can’t.
I found the material that followed to be a clear exposition of the fundamentals – this is as somebody who has tried to learn electronics over the years but nothing ever stuck. This did a better job than anything else at a pace that is about right for me.
But YMMV and I personally relish being in a room full of people who are smarter than me.
In my experience in a university ECE program, you'd start with understanding the high level properties of transistors, then combining transistors to make AND and OR gates, then XOR and other gates, then MUXes and half/full adders, then flip-flops and eventually into synchronous (clocked) logic.
The lab component of such coursework did start with TTL chips but the timing of the coursework was such that you'd have most of the asynchronous logic theory taught by the time the chips came out.
In my experience all serious electronics/electrical engineering learning material is written like this, as if the student knows everything about electronics except the one topic the author is explaining. Probably an artifact of being written for industry users. You can get used to it though, kind of putting boxes around certain circuits and just looking at behavior without asking how it works until you need to understand then doing a deep dive.
This is the equivalent of introducing programming by giving a piece of ARM assembly and stating that it is immediately obvious that we are dealing with a merge sort implementation.
I’m not sure why, but I see this often in other domains as well. Math in particular. I guess it’s the curse of knowledge.
Dear kaishiro, thank you very much for the observation. Really makes sense! I changed it a little bit to be less 'discouraging', because you really are a target audience. It is my "poor writing", as noted, that sometimes takes over :) Please let me know if this makes more sense.
I once took a computer architecture course from the designer of the Burroughs 6700, who had us do a similar exercise. But that was back when people actually built things out of 74xx TTL. Few people do that any more. It would be very unusual to use a 4-bit adder chip today, unless you're deliberately doing retro stuff. And even more unusual to start there. Also, a 4-bit adder, a stateless device, is only useful when surrounded by latches and clocks so that something useful happens.
Here's a real beginner level presentation, from Adafruit.[1] This may be too simplified for some.
The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill is highly recommended, but the original audience was
physics grad students who needed to build instrumentation for physics experiments.
The order of presentation is good, but it's a big book. Because it mentions current components by part number, the book ages rapidly.
> Is this really where one starts while learning basic electronics?
Hmm did you miss the introductory chapter that starts with diodes, transistors and basic logic gates that they told you vaguely about in high school physics?
There's quite a bit of info before getting to using the TTL chips.
Having played a bit with redstone circuits in Minecraft helps too - or knowing about diodes and transistors when doing redstone in Minecraft helps :)
The real start is on the next pages which goes into _real_ deep intro for Diodes and transistors. I think it was just a matter of giving an intro but overseeing that people don't know what these symbols mean.
For me, an electronics engineer by degree (not by trade), it was so basic I could see the author forgetting this.
I would say no, unless that is the kind of stuff you are specifically interested in.
You will probably never see a full adder chip outside of retro and tinkerer stuff. If there are commercial uses left, they might be gone and replaced by FPGAs soon.
If someone asked me to teach them the more modern way, more appropriate for someone who wants to make props or puzzles and stuff as opposed the more retro experimental stuff, I'd advise a bit differently.
I would probably tell them to start with an ESP32 powered Arduino module, and some op amps, because op amps are both easy to understand and practical.
And at the same time, brush up on your pure mathematics side stuff, if you don't want to be like me, not really able to do any of the super high end stuff.
At the basic level you won't even need algebra, as you do more advanced work the math gets heavier.
Before even touching a real circuit, go immediately to the Falstad Simulator, and check out their example circuits. No, it's not perfectly accurate, but it is an amazing tool and runs right in a browser.
I think there's a lot of stuff that is kind of cool to try out for educational purposes that might be best just left in the simulator, at least at first, so you don't have to buy a bunch of stuff just to try out, and then not know what to do.
Probably don't buy a name brand soldering iron, a Pinecil V2 is probably about what you want, or a random T12 station.
The current good cheap multimeter changes every week it seems, the no name stuff is always changing, IIRC right now it's the HT118 or something that a lot of people like, but I could be wrong.
Oh, and don't invent a brand new standard and decide you're going to make all your stuff compatible with it, make up a bunch of custom cables, etc. There's a high risk of being bored, or finding some new universal standard for everything, and winding up with piles of useless junk.
Just buy the parts you need for one project at a time. USB-C and barrel jacks are good. Don't use too many weird connector types, because cables take up so much space and are a really annoying kind of junk to have around.
Wagos and premade pigtails are your friend for making up adapters.
Learn the E3 resistor and capacitor values, see if you can keep to mostly just those, if you want to reduce the number of different parts you need.
Most intro tutorials don't cover a lot of this stuff I wish I had known....
It might have to do with how longtime "longtime developer" means.
I took a look at TFA because of this. My experience caps out at doing a few heathkits in the early 80s and one single soldering of a resistor on my Synology to repair an issue a few years ago. I *mostly* understood the diagram, most of which was due to seeing it during CS adjacent classes in the early 90s.
Unfortunately it's often the case that these ELI5 type articles assume baseline knowledge that's less than baseline.
I'd recommend the book "Practical Electronics for Inventors". For me it had the right balance between not making too many assumptions but still teaching interesting circuits.
To the folks I've seen in this thread despairing about how this seems really, really hard at first brush: it is. This is not really a page of intro level electronics concepts. Doesn't mention a whole lot about voltage, current, time vs frequency response, or how to get a grasp on any of those concepts.
If you want a gentler intro that walks you through some of the foundational concepts, Analog Devices has some great free courses on Circuit Theory:
It goes without saying that Ben Eater's 8-bit computer kits [1] are like Legos for wannabe-electronics nerds. The kits themselves were the response of the outpouring of requests from viewers of his amazing YouTube channel where he first rose to notoriety for his breadboard CPU and computer.
I am currently assembling his 6502 breadboard computer (with the 16 x 2 LCD character display).
Someone put together an awesome "1-100 Transistor Projects" as a PDF [2] for learning how transistor circuits work. The PDF + breadboard + a dozen or so transistors and small parts will keep you busy.
There's a sequel "101-200 Transistor Circuits" [3], one on IC circuits [4] and one on the venerable 555 timer chip [5].
The above should keep you busy for the rest of the year. If not, be sure to skim through some of the electronics hobbyist magazines [6].
I agree that learning with an Arduino/Pi Pico is personally more fun and gets you to the stage of making something practical, or at least interesting, much more quickly. That said, doing things fully at the resistor and diode level still has its place, since someone has to understand stuff well enough at that level to design the Arduinos and Picos that the rest of us play with.
If that's the route you want to take then that's absolutely fine.
That area of electronics is "modular digital electronics" and doesn't take you through the principles of basic passive components (resistors, capacitors, inductors) and then into analogue circuit theory and semiconductors, digital logic and so on.
The only thing that bugs me is when that approach is suggested as a response to 'how do I learn electronics' without any qualification or elaboration.
Please check this book by Ex-Google, Cisco, Sun engineer and adjunct professor of UC Berkeley,Ed Lipiansky on electronics fundamentals (analog and digital):
Electrical, Electronics, and Digital Hardware Essentials for Scientists and Engineers:
Thanks for sharing!
Does this teach one how to design circuits too?
Also, someone suggested ‘basic electronics: theory and practice’ by Westcott & Westcott [0] for learning hobby electronics. Could someone familiar with both explain how they compare?
I miss electronics retail, even with its issues. Radio Shack had the Forrest Mims engineer's notebooks for learning electronics, and it was great to be able to drive down to a Fry's to pick up a component that you needed in a hurry on a weekend.
Shout out to Anchor Electronics in Santa Clara, San Mateo Electronics Supply, and of course Jameco, which are still alive.
I'm also lamenting the loss of SF Bay area electronics surplus: Weird Stuff, Halted/HSC, and the latest casualty, Excess Solutions. Is there any place left around here to find used/surplus electronics?
Someone rewrote a bunch of text books from the 1970s and put them on the internet. Unless you work in IC development you don't need to know how comparators work internally. The logic gate examples are slighly less obsolete (early 1980s). This is yet another joke introduction written by a hobbyist who wants to mess with individual transistors for no purpose. There are no practical applications for these examples and there is no learning value in them.
Learn Basic Electronics... Build a legendary ping game.... that escalated quickly!
Looks like a really cool resource if you want to do the more old fashioned analog/discrete stuff.
Definitely a lot different than what I would probably show someone if they wanted to do hobby level more modern digital work, but it seems perfect for someone who wants to do stuff with transistors and logic gates.
Is what this website teaches useful in the real world? What I mean is - is there a demand for people who know digital electronics or is it mainly for people who are curious how chips work?
vector_spaces|2 years ago
I never really imagined I would be interested in this stuff, much less find it kind of beautiful. Pure math brain, if you aren't careful, can train you to view anything applied with disdain, and something as earthy as hardware even moreso. But it's kind of beautiful how there are deep and inevitable connections between some of the most abstract theory computer science has to offer (plt, pl design and implementation) and the way physical objects are harnessed for computation. I guess if you consider that von Neumann was a mathematician first and foremost then it starts to make more sense
Either way, I'm having a great time -- definitely recommend anyone in a similar position learn this stuff whenever you're ready for it
yard2010|2 years ago
[0] https://www.nand2tetris.org/
fhjkkkkk|2 years ago
You are now a hacker:-)
Just in case you never heard about the CCC and hacker festival s: https://media.ccc.de/
A ton of great video recordings from tons of super cool hacker events are stored and there are also plugins to watch it on a smarttv
aryamaan|2 years ago
kaishiro|2 years ago
> In order to present our paradigm in learning electronics, we can take an example of a full adder chip that enables binary addition. Let us use a top-down approach, and look at the datasheet of the TTL (Transistor-Transistor Logic) chip 7483. We will immediately notice that the chip performs the addition of two 4-bit binary words, A and B.
...and the associated diagram, just immediately left me feeling like I was standing in a room full of people who were smarter than me. Is this really where one starts while learning basic electronics?
dgacmu|2 years ago
dpwm|2 years ago
I found the material that followed to be a clear exposition of the fundamentals – this is as somebody who has tried to learn electronics over the years but nothing ever stuck. This did a better job than anything else at a pace that is about right for me.
But YMMV and I personally relish being in a room full of people who are smarter than me.
matmann2001|2 years ago
The lab component of such coursework did start with TTL chips but the timing of the coursework was such that you'd have most of the asynchronous logic theory taught by the time the chips came out.
porknubbins|2 years ago
SanderNL|2 years ago
This is the equivalent of introducing programming by giving a piece of ARM assembly and stating that it is immediately obvious that we are dealing with a merge sort implementation.
I’m not sure why, but I see this often in other domains as well. Math in particular. I guess it’s the curse of knowledge.
dnlbele|2 years ago
Animats|2 years ago
Here's a real beginner level presentation, from Adafruit.[1] This may be too simplified for some.
The Art of Electronics by Horowitz and Hill is highly recommended, but the original audience was physics grad students who needed to build instrumentation for physics experiments. The order of presentation is good, but it's a big book. Because it mentions current components by part number, the book ages rapidly.
[1] https://learn.adafruit.com/guides/beginner
nottorp|2 years ago
Hmm did you miss the introductory chapter that starts with diodes, transistors and basic logic gates that they told you vaguely about in high school physics?
There's quite a bit of info before getting to using the TTL chips.
Having played a bit with redstone circuits in Minecraft helps too - or knowing about diodes and transistors when doing redstone in Minecraft helps :)
Mraedis|2 years ago
For me, an electronics engineer by degree (not by trade), it was so basic I could see the author forgetting this.
eternityforest|2 years ago
You will probably never see a full adder chip outside of retro and tinkerer stuff. If there are commercial uses left, they might be gone and replaced by FPGAs soon.
If someone asked me to teach them the more modern way, more appropriate for someone who wants to make props or puzzles and stuff as opposed the more retro experimental stuff, I'd advise a bit differently.
I would probably tell them to start with an ESP32 powered Arduino module, and some op amps, because op amps are both easy to understand and practical.
And at the same time, brush up on your pure mathematics side stuff, if you don't want to be like me, not really able to do any of the super high end stuff.
At the basic level you won't even need algebra, as you do more advanced work the math gets heavier.
Before even touching a real circuit, go immediately to the Falstad Simulator, and check out their example circuits. No, it's not perfectly accurate, but it is an amazing tool and runs right in a browser.
I think there's a lot of stuff that is kind of cool to try out for educational purposes that might be best just left in the simulator, at least at first, so you don't have to buy a bunch of stuff just to try out, and then not know what to do.
Probably don't buy a name brand soldering iron, a Pinecil V2 is probably about what you want, or a random T12 station.
The current good cheap multimeter changes every week it seems, the no name stuff is always changing, IIRC right now it's the HT118 or something that a lot of people like, but I could be wrong.
Oh, and don't invent a brand new standard and decide you're going to make all your stuff compatible with it, make up a bunch of custom cables, etc. There's a high risk of being bored, or finding some new universal standard for everything, and winding up with piles of useless junk.
Just buy the parts you need for one project at a time. USB-C and barrel jacks are good. Don't use too many weird connector types, because cables take up so much space and are a really annoying kind of junk to have around.
Wagos and premade pigtails are your friend for making up adapters.
Learn the E3 resistor and capacitor values, see if you can keep to mostly just those, if you want to reduce the number of different parts you need.
Most intro tutorials don't cover a lot of this stuff I wish I had known....
jghn|2 years ago
I took a look at TFA because of this. My experience caps out at doing a few heathkits in the early 80s and one single soldering of a resistor on my Synology to repair an issue a few years ago. I *mostly* understood the diagram, most of which was due to seeing it during CS adjacent classes in the early 90s.
Unfortunately it's often the case that these ELI5 type articles assume baseline knowledge that's less than baseline.
dayjaby|2 years ago
JKCalhoun|2 years ago
cushychicken|2 years ago
If you want a gentler intro that walks you through some of the foundational concepts, Analog Devices has some great free courses on Circuit Theory:
https://wiki.analog.com/university/courses/circuits#circuits...
And another great one on electronics:
https://wiki.analog.com/university/courses/electronics/text/...
They are the best in the business at analog circuit design and A/D conversion. Worthy of your attention if you're serious about learning this stuff.
Vayl|2 years ago
JKCalhoun|2 years ago
I am currently assembling his 6502 breadboard computer (with the 16 x 2 LCD character display).
Someone put together an awesome "1-100 Transistor Projects" as a PDF [2] for learning how transistor circuits work. The PDF + breadboard + a dozen or so transistors and small parts will keep you busy.
There's a sequel "101-200 Transistor Circuits" [3], one on IC circuits [4] and one on the venerable 555 timer chip [5].
The above should keep you busy for the rest of the year. If not, be sure to skim through some of the electronics hobbyist magazines [6].
[1] https://eater.net
[2] https://archive.org/details/1To100TransistorCircuits
[3] https://www.talkingelectronics.com/projects/200TrCcts/101-20...
[4] https://www.talkingelectronics.com/projects/100%20IC%20Circu...
[5] https://www.talkingelectronics.com/projects/50%20-%20555%20C...
[6] https://worldradiohistory.com/Popular-Electronics-Guide.htm
jboy55|2 years ago
https://turingcomplete.game/
_Microft|2 years ago
polalavik|2 years ago
[1] https://hardwareteams.com/docs/analog/circuits-resouces/
dnlbele|2 years ago
hospitalJail|2 years ago
So much nicer to grab an ardunio, motor, led, some sensors, etc...
Then graduate to esp8266/esp32.
But maybe I'm thinking embedded and my 2 years as an electrical engineer filled in some of the gaps when calculating things.
Eh, just my opinion.
Cyberdog|2 years ago
linker3000|2 years ago
That area of electronics is "modular digital electronics" and doesn't take you through the principles of basic passive components (resistors, capacitors, inductors) and then into analogue circuit theory and semiconductors, digital logic and so on.
The only thing that bugs me is when that approach is suggested as a response to 'how do I learn electronics' without any qualification or elaboration.
jimmychoozyx|2 years ago
"Practical Electronics for Inventors, Fourth Edition"
Book by Paul Scherz and Simon Monk
Word on the street is that it can be found on https://libgen.is/
fabatka|2 years ago
max_|2 years ago
teleforce|2 years ago
Electrical, Electronics, and Digital Hardware Essentials for Scientists and Engineers:
https://www.wiley.com/en-us/Electrical,+Electronics,+and+Dig...
sriram_malhar|2 years ago
btw, Ed wasn't an adjunct at Berkeley. He taught at the UC Berkeley and UC Santa Cruz _extension_ program.
agnosticmantis|2 years ago
Also, someone suggested ‘basic electronics: theory and practice’ by Westcott & Westcott [0] for learning hobby electronics. Could someone familiar with both explain how they compare?
0: https://books.google.com/books/about/Basic_Electronics.html?...
paphillips|2 years ago
Shout out to Anchor Electronics in Santa Clara, San Mateo Electronics Supply, and of course Jameco, which are still alive.
I'm also lamenting the loss of SF Bay area electronics surplus: Weird Stuff, Halted/HSC, and the latest casualty, Excess Solutions. Is there any place left around here to find used/surplus electronics?
ttarr|2 years ago
[0] https://vocademy.net/
mike50|2 years ago
SanderNL|2 years ago
eternityforest|2 years ago
Looks like a really cool resource if you want to do the more old fashioned analog/discrete stuff.
Definitely a lot different than what I would probably show someone if they wanted to do hobby level more modern digital work, but it seems perfect for someone who wants to do stuff with transistors and logic gates.
dnlbele|2 years ago
RivieraKid|2 years ago
saboot|2 years ago
dnlbele|2 years ago
dnlbele|2 years ago