When a person completes week 4, they'll have learned boolean logic, if/for loops, bytes & variables, and had an overview of hardware from the previous weeks.

When a person completes week 4, they'll have learned boolean logic, if/for loops, bytes & variables, and had an overview of hardware from the previous weeks. If the person is ambitious, that is the minimum required to begin, and it might be worth seeing just how far they can get in Nand2Tetris[0] where a person simulates building elementary logic gates and circuits leading to an also very basic Arithmetic logic unit and simple ram from nand gates. I wouldn't expect the person with just a few weeks of CS101 to do week 4 of Nand2Tetris where they try out machine language on their machine that leads to building an assembler, and then a compiler, as this eventually requires knowing Java or a similar language, but more power to them if they preview the course and see how much they can understand. [0] https://www.nand2tetris.org/ https://www.nand2tetris.org/