Learner Reviews & Feedback for Build a Modern Computer from First Principles: Nand to Tetris Part II (project-centered course) by Hebrew University of Jerusalem

A fascinating and incredibly well-made course. Check out my Medium article as to why you should be taking this course: https://medium.com/@seandlg/what-nand2tetris-has-taught-me-about-computers-and-more-importantly-about-learning-aebc84af3030

If it's not the absolute hardest course you've taken, it'll be one of the hardest courses you've taken. The workload is staggering. At an Ivy League University you'll have an entire semester + winter break to write a compiler. Here you'll have three weeks. Buckle down & get ready to work hard.

Challenging but rewarding.

About a year ago I started mucking about with code with the aim of becoming a web developing. I started with front end and could get away with knowing next to nothing about how computers actually worked and the big software picture. As my interest grew however I quickly became dispirited because I just didn't know enough about what was really going on. Now I no longer feel like a fraud teaching myself code. This course was everything I was looking for.

My only criticism would be the last project. My implementation of the operating system classes passed the tests however it turned out I had let in some really stupid bugs which the tests didn't pick up. This led to easily the most frustrating part of the course as I then discovered most of my classes were incompatible. After the best part of another's weeks work, and several submissions later, I got full marks on the final project. That being said it is probably very difficult to test everything as the classes leave a lot open in terms of implementation.

Thanks a lot. It was a great course.

I'm a 13 year old 8th Grader from California. I loved this course and learned a lot! Thank you Mr.Schocken for putting together such a wonderful course! It was a thrill to finish the course finally!

Overall, it's an excellent course covering a lot of concepts, definitely the best online course I have done so far. The latter weeks are quite overloaded though, I think it might be better as a slightly longer course, with an additional week focussing on the VM language and the use/history of the stack and heap distinction.

I feel that I reviewed more deeply a bunch of courses taught at my university . Thank you.

This course is a lot more demanding in terms of time and effort compared to "Nand to Tetris Part I." While Part I took me about a week to complete total, for Part II I actually needed the entire week per unit. They estimate about 10 hours per programming assignment, but I found that to be an underestimate. Unlike in Part I, you are expected to be proficient in a high-level programming language such as Python or Java. A lot of the assignments in Part II are similar to Project 6 in Part I (building the assembler). If you did the programming track for that assignment and enjoyed it, then you're ready for Part II. In the end, I feel like all the effort was worth it, since I greatly improved my programming skills and gained a greater appreciation for what goes on "under the hood."

The second part of Nand2Tetris is a magical illuminating journey to the inner depths of computer systems including virtual machines, compilers, high level programming and operating systems covering some of the main concepts in computer science such as dynamic memory management, text and graphic representations using input/output devices, math, strings and arrays library implementations...

Like the first part of Nand2Tetris it is magnificently taught and I recommend it to anybody who wants to demystify (some of) the magics of computers for themselves.

However I should warn you that it requires a great deal of commitment and many hours of study, research and programming each week in order to be able to complete the course; Specifically the high level programming project would require some well thought application/game so you might be able to implement it in Jack High Level Language in time and only in one week.

Basic knowledge of a high level programming language like Python or Java is required in order to accomplish the programming tasks of writing an Assembler, a Virtual Machine, a Compiler and also would be helpful when writing the OS in Jack (the native Hack High Level Language).

Finally the last two projects (compiler part 2 and OS) are extremely challenging, specially the second part of the compiler in which I literally was crying for help :D

Excellent job Prof. Shimon Shocken!

Great Course!

The course becomes so hard for me since week 4 when we started developing compiler.

Each assignment I spent 5 hours watching videos and making notes, 10 hours coding, and 10+hours debugging.

My feeling:

It turns out that although it is: time-consuming (I am a master student in environmental management with a full course schedule, projects for week 4,5,6 made me postpone to this section) and mentally challenging (I am not well-educated on software design and algorithms so I spent a lot of time debugging my code, fail, edit, fail, edit,..)

However, the sense of accomplishment when I finally got 100 for each project (almost) is incomparable, unique, and unparalleled. Love this course!

Suggestion

Hope we could redesign the week 4,5,6. The workload exponentially increased and reached the maximum in week 5. My strategy was postponing and postponing until I got time to work the assignment out. I hope we could reestimate the workload (maybe separate week 5, 6 into two weeks, perspectively. The videos are 3+ hours long😂)

In the end, love this course. Shimon and Noam are excellent instructors, their teaching style is very enlightening, the slide animation is great for illustrating processes clearly.

Almost perfect. But writing the compiler and the operating system took me far more than the projected 10 hours. IMHO, part II should be split into two, and a few more words and guides on how to structure a compiler would be preferable. Also, I think that the programming assignments touch project dimensions, so mentioning version control systems might be a good advise.

Nevertheless, and without a doubt, a fantastic course given by one of the most ambitious and relentless instructors with great teaching skills and dedication to the topic.

What an effort by the teachers! Such complex concepts simplified for a large and varied target audience. I thoroughly enjoyed doing the exercises for this course. I am eager to take up the part 3 whenever it comes out.

splendid

Great, highly recommended.

This course has been brilliant. I expected to learn a lot, but I got so much more out of this. Its incredible to see such a powerful machine coming out of such a simple design - a true mark of elegance.

Excellent, challenging course. Learned way more than I expected!

One of the best computer science courses I ever had. You start understand how actually things like heap, stack, etc. works.

Thank you so much Shimon Schocken!!

Part two was tough, but it was very helpful.

Great course! Together with part1, it goes through how a computer does what it does, but in a simple way. That is not to say it's not valuable, it was very cool to see how things work behind the scenes and how they did all that! Best course I've done!

As great as the first part, although far more demanding.

Great course

Very well structured, you learn a lot, primarily by doing, which is the best learning. The project where you program in Jack is in my opinion unnecessary, and the OS part is just a bag of random stuff, but overall, one of the best courses out there.

I really enjoyed this beautiful course for 6 weeks. And it was very challengeable, but exciting for me.

I look forward to going Nand 2 Tetris Part 3 near furture.

Great thanks for Noam and Shimon with this great courses!!!

This is a brilliant and very challenging project oriented course. Even as a IT professional doing this course for fun the workload can be very demanding. Be prepared to work hard and for long hours to get through this course. But the tremendous feeling of accomplishment at the end makes it all worthwhile. I have not felt this way since my undergraduate days. Thank you for reigniting my passion.

This is an excellent course giving good view of operating system, compiler and fitting the pieces together. Highly recommended

This was a great course which tied together so many loose ends for me. E.g., I knew that OO languages would add a hidden "this" parameter, that compiling would get rid of symbols, that malloc worked with a heap, but now I REALLY know how all that works.