Hacker News Reader

It's not, we just use NAND everywhere because they're easier to make with transistors. You can get functional completeness with a NOR instead, or alternatively with some different combinations of other logical operators.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_completeness

We even implement AND gates with NANDs in electronics (because they're way simpler), but we might not have to limit ourselves to a single base gate with mechanical computers.

Could be either {NAND}, or {NOR}.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Functional_completeness

https://proofwiki.org/wiki/Functionally_Complete_Singleton_S...

I believe an inverter (not gate) is required...

You can route a wire to both inputs of a NAND or NOR gate to create a NOT.

Where do you think the N in NOR and NAND come from?

> Where do you think the N in NOR and NAND come from?

That makes it sound like you could also do a NOT with XNOR, which is only the case if you can use a constant 0. But that would similarly also be the case for a XOR, but with the requirement of a 1.

That’s cool, but I meant to imply it is kind of backwards to make a NOT gate with a component that itself is fundamentally built out of a NOT gate.