Hello from the homeschooling community

[LionelGoulet]

My name is Lionel Goulet. My two sons are homeschooled and we are going to tackle NAND2Tetris this fall. The last time I saw this curriculum was 40 years ago as a Junior in college. At that time we built hardware using discreet chips and push-pin wiring on 19'' racks. A simple counter took 16 cubic feet of hardware. We built a computer that played tic-tac-toe. It took five 5' racks. Implementation has gotten a lot easier. But the basic thinking behind it all, still a challenge. Wish us luck! :)

[CVC director]

I realize your post was several years ago, but I was interested in hearing how your experience was completing this course with your children.  How old were your kids at the time? Were there any sections that required more time or explanation? Did the kids have prior experience with computer programming? How much experience?

We are a homeschooling community considering offering this class to high school students over the course of a year, taught by a person with a computer science degree and many years of experience in the field.  

Thanks!

[LionelGoulet]

The first parts of the course were excellent. Simple logic, an adder, software simulation of hardware gates … the boys got into it.

When the course graduated into software: the stack, the programming language, local vs. global variables, objects…I was aghast at how poorly designed it was after that point.

 

I highly recommend against NAND2Tetris, unless you restrict yourselves to the hardware part only. There, it is excellent. Or, have your computer science degreed teacher re-write the software portion.

 

By way of a post script, my older son is minoring in Computer Science now at UMass Amherst, so maybe it did him some good. Or, at least, it didn’t kill his interest.

 

-LLiioonneell

Lionel Goulet

I only read my email once a day. I’m only a little better with texts. If you need an answer right away, call me.

[phone]

Te Deum

 

From: CVC director [via Nand2Tetris Questions and Answers Forum] [mailto:[hidden email]]
Sent: Wednesday, April 6, 2016 8:17 PM
To: LionelGoulet <[hidden email]>
Subject: Re: Hello from the homeschooling community

 

I realize your post was several years ago, but I was interested in hearing how your experience was completing this course with your children.  How old were your kids at the time? Were there any sections that required more time or explanation? Did the kids have prior experience with computer programming? How much experience?

We are a homeschooling community considering offering this class to high school students over the course of a year, taught by a person with a computer science degree and many years of experience in the field.  

Thanks!

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NAML

[ybakos]

Thanks for sharing that Lionel.

I too feel that, in order for a student to appreciate the software portions, they should have some prior programming experience. Diving right into the software stack for a new learner faces many challenges. Writing an assembler as one's first program doesn't quite sound as fun as "let's build a sweet graphical game with Processing!"