Digital fundamentals

What Hacker News says

1. JachApr 2022
   For "how things work", I recommend the book Code by Charles Petzold. After that, Jon Stokes's Inside the Machine will give a lot of details on CPU architectures up to Intel's Core 2 Duo. You can also try following along a computer engineering book if you want to go that low in detail with exercises, Digital Fundamentals by Floyd is a common textbook (I have an old 8th edition).

   History-wise, enjoy learning slowly because there's so much that even if you dedicated yourself to it you wouldn't be "done" any time soon! Some suggestions in order though:

   Watching The Mother of All Demos: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yJDv-zdhzMY

   A short clip of Sketchpad presented by Alan Kay: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=495nCzxM9PI

   An article from the 40s that also inspired Engelbart: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1945/07/as-we-m...

   The Information by James Gleick

   What the Dormouse Said by John Markoff

   The Psychology of Computer Programming by Gerald Weinberg

   Lastly, to mix up in whatever order you please, some paper collections:

   Object-Oriented Programming: The CLOS Perspective edited by Andreas Paepcke

   History of Programming Languages papers for various langs you're interested in, here's the set from the second conference in 1993 https://dl.acm.org/doi/proceedings/10.1145/154766 but there have been further conferences to check out too if it's interesting

   Also all of the Turing Award winners' lectures I've read have been good https://amturing.acm.org/lectures.cfm

   All that and some good recommendations others have given should keep you busy for a while!

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2. JachNov 2017
   I think there's a lot of fun to be had with electronics when you don't use a microcontroller. Breadboarding, analog components, maybe some digital logic circuitry... And if you use a microcontroller, either not putting a linux distro on it or getting one that is incapable of running linux... For finding structured sources, you can do pretty well by just picking a college, finding their computer engineering program, some classes that look interesting, and see what books they require then buy them or see if a library has them. https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Fundamentals-10th-Thomas-Floy... or https://www.amazon.com/Digital-Electronics-Practical-Approac... are fairly good for instance but there are many others and some more appropriate for whatever your real study goals are.

   It's really important to have a specific goal in mind regardless of whether you prefer to learn how to solve it with structured or unstructured materials, and to have an initial idea of what level of detail you want to go in order to accomplish the goal. The lower level you want to learn the less up-to-date your resources have to be, our understanding of electricity hasn't fundamentally changed since Maxwell's equations. :) Something like "I want to turn on a smart light of this type when there is motion in this area, and turn it off after 5 minutes" is a nice goal. And you can accomplish it at many different levels of hackery, and learn very deeply if you want about each component of your solution (for instance there's the entire field of RF if you want to know how the antenna works).

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3. shivajikobardanSep 2025
   I read the digital fundamentals book by thomas l floyd most parts. And I am again reading them. However I realized it lacks contents on memory(It has chapters but it is basic stuffs). It does not prepare you enough to take take a Computer Organization and Architecture class, where you will learn about designing control unit and stuffs like that.

   Thus i am sitting in hackernews, asking about recommendations on what should be my next book?

   Since I am interviewing for electronics companies soon, I will like to prepare myself for it as well.

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4. shivajikobardanJul 2023
   Here are my choices(in no particular order). You can recommend something out of this as well.

   1) Electronic Devices and Circuits by JB Gupta.

   2) Electrronic Principles by albert malvino, david j bates, patrick e hoppe

   3) Electronic devices and circuit theory by boylestad and nashelsky

   4) microelectronic circuits by sedra smith

   5) Op-amps and linear integrated circuits by ramakant a. gayakwad

   1) Digital Electronics by william h. gothmann

   2) digital logic and computer organization by v.rajaraman, t.radhakrishnan

   3) digital fundamentals by thomas. l floyd

   4) digital logic design by mansaf alam, bashir alam

   5) digital logic and microprocessor design with vhdl by enoch o hwang

   6) digital design by m.morris mano and michael d.ciletti

   7) digital logic and computer deisng by m. morris mano

   8) digital systems design by charles h roth jr, lizy kurion john

   Purpose of buying these books:

   1) To prepare for comptitive exams.

   2) To have a good book as reference whenever I want to learn something. Having a book physically means a lot.

   3) Have good exercises that can help me brainstorm and understand the concepts. More is always not better but there should be enough.

   PS: Books like the art of electronics are out of scope. I generally don't like morris mano's books, idk why. That's all.

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