So I got up earlier than usual this morning to work on a post about more details on how CPUs work and some actual assembly language. In particular I was planning to introduce the notion of registers and maybe the stack (all of this using a neat web-based 6502 emulator).
But then it occurred to me that I really don’t have a good sense of whether this is what folks want to read about. So I figured I would provide a quick recap instead and then lay out some possible directions.
So far Tech Tuesday has covered:
1. An Overview of Building Blocs
2. Of Bits and Bytes (Binary Number System)
3. A First Look at the Central Processing Unit (CPU)
4. Main Memory (Dumb, Lazy and Slow)
5. Storage (Oh My, How It Has Grown)
6. No Computer is an Island (Networking)
7. Input/Output (Interrupts and Queues)
8. Operating Systems (Making It All Work)
From here there are a great many places to go. So let me describe three different possibilities for what’s next and see if there are any strong preferences.
Programming Basics: This would take a language such as Javascript and introduce basic programming concepts such as variables and controls structures (e.g. branching, loops). Would probably leverage Codeacademy.
Lower Level Programming: This is sort of where I was headed before deciding to ask for direction. The sequence would start by taking a look inside the CPU and its registers. We would then examine some assembly code and work our way up towards programming in C.
Web Technologies: This would be a series of posts covering what HTML is, how the HTTP request cycle works, and how domain names are resolved to IP addresses. I might also throw in some CSS and Javascript.
I am planning to cover all of these topics and many more eventually so this is not a question about whether or not any of these should be part of Tech Tuesdays, rather what to cover next. So to get help with this I am trying to get a better sense of the audience currently reading Tech Tuesdays and what your are all interested in. There are only four questions. The more people answer, the better I can make the series.
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