Quick Book Rec

I’ve only finished up through Chapter 3, but that much alone justifies $20 for this book^{1 2}

You can download the hardware simulator and build logic gates, an ALU, memory registers, etc (you are given a NAND and a flipflop). Then you write an assembler on top of that, then a compiler on top of that then an operating system out of that. Super awesome.

The book is presented as a college-level integration of other, separate college-level classes. But really, the parts I’ve read so far (only about ¼ of the book) could be used in high school easily. In fact, my 12 year old computer nerd son isn’t having much trouble, although he’s only up through Chapter 1. I think he’ll have more trouble writing a compiler than making an XOR gate.