Written by a 16 year old, a book on how computers work

What a commendable effort! I come from the days of KIM-1 and cpu and memory boards where the function of every chip was discernable.

At the time, I told my boss to learn these things while they were still comprehensible.

Knowing "what goes on inside" is fun.

Hats off! Wish I had the the grit and determination at 16 to write something like this

> A 'special' CPU register that holds the memory address of the next instruction

Though it's been years since (grad school) I dealt with any assembly, for some reason I recall this being the EIP register? These days, I rarely touch low level language and yet, I have such a deep and profound love for them.

Awesome work! As always, there is an opportunity to “extend” this down/up a few layers :)

Also, are you Algerian by any chance? I am Tunisian - it’s always nice to see North Africans (and Africans in general) on HN!

I keep thinking someday I’ll write something but my life has been such a mess lately and my inspiration is about as low as it’s ever been.

This is beyond brilliant! So well written. Love the gen Z tone. I’m bookmarking it for my kids.

They have an equally impressive post [1] about CPUs!

[1] https://cpu.land

This gives me very old-internet vibes. Like somebody mashed together an introductory guide to how computers work with Real Ultimate Power: https://www.realultimatepower.net/ninja/ninja2.htm

I don't know how to feel about it as an effective instructional guide, but it sure is creative. If it helped its author understand computers through the act of collecting, organizing, and presenting the information, I suppose it was worth it in the end.

I'm curious whether this helps anyone - why and how.

I suppose there's some value in minimizing the "cultural impedence mismatch" - using genz terms/style/jokes.

But the quality is not as good as "normal/longform" (let me coin "oldsplaining") coverage on the subject. And really, shouldn't we all aspire to do a good job, rather than just a meh job that's comfortable?

This is the TT of explanations: not entirely accurate, relatively shallow, aimed at being quickly scroll-through-able to obtain a facile sense of knowing. For people who find Blinkist too slow-old-fashioned. You can survive on Pizza Pops, but you really shouldn't.

A byte is the smallest addressable unit, not a bit.

This article could maybe use something about Dell having a partnership with Rambus proliferating the world with those modules RD-RAM for a year or two. It was more than just a concept which never saw light. It was a spectacular failure.

It’s a cool project. You’ll have fun writing a compiler

Love the cute writing style it's actually more fun to read compare to boring textbooks

It’s inspiring. Just wanted to write it.

Greetings! This is coming from a.. as the title says, a 16 year old who wrote a mini-book on how computers operate internally focusing on RAM and CPU aspects, respectively. Because almost all of us (if not all) use computers and similar devices on a daily basis without an ACTUAL idea on how they work, even though you might have a brief view of your system. You get my point.

Just the fact that I've been using something and not knowing the way it really works, made me go insane. And that's exactly why i stepped up and taught myself all of it, from start to finish, While Apparently my coding knowledge didn't undermine me from writing this in a way of "Im teaching you what i learned" rather than "learning and writing" that took nearly 6 months to finish completely!

If you're the background person.. fine, some acknowledgments you might want: Something that made me crazier? web-dev, no disrespect to you folks out there but i had to add some extra time to the writing (which is exhausting in itself) just to code a (yet) simple HTML/CSS/JS website for the book. But since then, i fell in love with web-design and styling after using Figma to draw all the illustrations seen throughout the segments. Also I had the idea to initiate this project when i was 15! So i think it's pretty safe to say that this article went through a draft-phase of randomly collecting technical information.

And i'm finally happy to share it with the globe! to put it in simple Hacker News fashion, any feedback and/or suggestion(s) is greatly appreciated hoping this becomes a learning material. Check it out and i guarantee you will learn a thing or two: https://github.com/hackclub/RAM-a-thon

I like how you highlight key terms. I think that helps a lot with readability.

I also like the irreverent tone.

> Unexpected tidbit: If you abbreviate the term 'interrupt descriptor table'. Then reverse it - You get 'TDI', which stands for Turbo Charged Diesel Injection, an engine developed by Volkswagen fo- Okay. Ethically, believe it or not but computers emit more CO2 than cars.

Does this really help people learn the material? I am doing a presentation on networking in a week or two for a high school group. Certainly I could include stuff like this, but to me it seems more like a distraction. If I was writing this I would rather include something like a sample table of how IDT's were used by old DOS video games. (Disclaimer: I'm 30)