Hacker News Reader

Comment by esikich | Hacker News Reader

What's absurd is thinking because you took a logic class and made a flip flop 30 years ago that that is the ground floor and that it means you "understand how it all works". You're not building a CPU from logic gates and you don't know how it works. If I put you or OP in a room for a year I highly doubt you could build an 8 bit Atari-like CPU from scratch. I worked with wires and logic too but I'm not arrogant enough to say that I know how it all works.

View on HN

Don't you think there is a difference from "knowing how it works" and "reproducing every aspect of it at the level of the state of the art" ?

Also, your example seems flawed if you restrict to a certain product. Can I build a compiler from scratch? Yes. Can I reproduce in a year a compiler with LLVM/GCC performance level? No. Can I build a compiler from scratch in a year from a room if I need to starting mining from metals, building transistors, then building the first assembler and then implementing the compiler? You can imagine the answer.

Not really, at least not in this discussion. An assembly programmer gets logic gates, a C programmer gets assembly, etc etc. And each one can say to the one above "well you don't really get it if you can't bang out some meaningful work". Otherwise idk what we're even talking about here. Having a vague understanding of something isn't "knowing how it works".

Yeah, but if we use your criteria, people have to invent their own atoms out of individual electrons, protons, neutrons, quarks, etc before you'd admit that "hey, they did build a compiler from scratch".

I think a fair bar for "from scratch" is stopping at the point they need an expensive fab process (or how else will they reproduce the workings of semiconductors?)

Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0137909101

Explains how to build an 8 bit calculator with wires, switches, and light bulbs and then keeps on going.

This is a very cringe take.

Me and OP aren’t super heroes, we can’t do what a team of talented individuals created even if that team existed many moons ago. That isn’t the point.

We both questioned the tone and the conclusion of the comment.

> If I put you or OP in a room for a year I highly doubt you could build an 8 bit Atari-like CPU from scratch.

I believe I can, depending on what "from scratch" means. With nothing but transistors, resistors, inductors, coils, capacitors, I can probably do apretty poor general-purpose CPU. Maybe something like a stack-based ISA or, if I had more time, an accumulator-based processor like a 6502, but with an 8-bit bus.

If you're going to ask me to create transistors themselves, well I believe that needs specialised equipment.

The parent post's argument can be boiled down to "You don't know absolutely everything therefore it's fine to know little or nothing." It's the Chewbacca defense of AI boosterism.

That was one the major criticism I have of my CS degree's program. Perhaps the knowledge I wish for is not truly CS in the mathematical/theoretical perspective, but I believe it would have been absolutely valuable to learn.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com