3 ms·

My biggest problem with the book is that it gives you an adequate, hand-wavey idea of how a computer works, but it doesn't impart any hard skills. Karnaugh maps

My biggest problem with the book is that it gives you an adequate, hand-wavey idea of how a computer works, but it doesn't impart any hard skills. Karnaugh maps are a reusable skill in digital design. I've done hundreds of them for simple problems, it's like breathing now. I suspect using multiplexers to simplify a design is also left out. VHDL is a real language people actually use, and you can put it on your CV or do something besides this class with it. Breadboarding a real circuit and troubleshooting it is useful and opens up a whole world of projects. This class equips you with the tools and knowledge to do one thing: finish the class. It guides you along, handing you simplified abstractions that allow you to progress without getting frustrated. At the end, however, you'll only really know how to take the class. If you wanted to drill deeper, you've already done the introductory week where they do a high-level overview of the course material.

tlrobinson 13y ago
This is like complaining learning algebra doesn't equip you to be a mathematician. That's not the purpose. I studied computer engineering and computer science, and I haven't used Karnaugh maps or VHDL since college because I write software now. I'm still glad I studied computer engineering though, because it gave me a deep understanding of how computers work.
leoedin 13y ago
You're not going to learn enough of any HDL in a 100 page tutorial to be particularly proficient in it anyway. Trying to explain the quirks of VHDL in a short tutorial would be a nightmare. The result would inevitably be skipping over stuff rather than explaining it. Coming from a software-development background, once you get into the higher-level aspects of writing VHDL (and I'd assume Verilog, although I have no experience with it) there's a lot of fundamental mistakes you can make in your understanding of how the language is interpreted into hardware. Using their own HDL which doesn't have much more than basic primitives stops people falling into those holes. In my opinion, the hard part of hardware description is understanding the concepts, not the language used. If you've got a basic understanding of hardware description, the barriers to moving to VHDL or verilog will be much lower. Coming from the other direction, I can see large similarities between the concepts in their HDL and VHDL - the syntax may be slightly different, but the concepts are the same.

tlrobinson 13y ago

This is like complaining learning algebra doesn't equip you to be a mathematician. That's not the purpose. I studied computer engineering and computer science, and I haven't used Karnaugh maps or VHDL since college because I write software now. I'm still glad I studied computer engineering though, because it gave me a deep understanding of how computers work.

leoedin 13y ago

You're not going to learn enough of any HDL in a 100 page tutorial to be particularly proficient in it anyway. Trying to explain the quirks of VHDL in a short tutorial would be a nightmare. The result would inevitably be skipping over stuff rather than explaining it. Coming from a software-development background, once you get into the higher-level aspects of writing VHDL (and I'd assume Verilog, although I have no experience with it) there's a lot of fundamental mistakes you can make in your understanding of how the language is interpreted into hardware. Using their own HDL which doesn't have much more than basic primitives stops people falling into those holes. In my opinion, the hard part of hardware description is understanding the concepts, not the language used. If you've got a basic understanding of hardware description, the barriers to moving to VHDL or verilog will be much lower. Coming from the other direction, I can see large similarities between the concepts in their HDL and VHDL - the syntax may be slightly different, but the concepts are the same.