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Building a Modern Computer From First Principles

A computer science textbook that wasn't discussed here before, and that many of you may haven't encountered yet.

The basic approach is summarized in the title of the authors presentation From Nand to Tetris in 12 Steps (3.5 MB, Powerpoint).

I am sure LtU readers will find a lot to complain about (they authors build an OO language...), but I am fond of the hands on approach, which is kind of similar to the approach taken by our favorites: SICP, CTM, EOPL etc.

Update: The published book is The Elements of Computing Systems, Building a Modern Computer from First Principles. Noam Nisan and Shimon Schocken, MIT Press, 2005.

By Ehud Lamm at 2005-03-02 13:57 | Teaching & Learning | 18 comments | other blogs | 19575 reads

Wanted: platform-independent Standard ML

I'm currently taking a PL design class which uses Norman Ramsey's draft textbook, which involves a lot of interpreters written in Standard ML. I can get ML implementations for my desktop machines, but I'd like to find one I could compile for my Zaurus (Linux-based handheld). The catch is that the existing compilers I can find either (a) generate machine code (and don't support ARM) or (b) at build time, require smlnj (which doesn't support ARM).

Moscow ML might be an exception, but camlrun keeps segving during the build process. So, I was hoping that there might be something more portable out there; and I figured this was a good place to ask. Anybody know?

By John Stracke at 2005-03-02 21:48 | LtU Forum | 6 comments | other blogs | 6732 reads