How to follow

[strawHat121]

Hi everyone, I recently found out about Nand2Tetris and I want to learn it. But I am little bit confused as to what to do.

First of all there is a book, is that necessary to follow this? There is also a Coursera course and some pdfs and ppts present in the course section of the book here. Are those necessary alongside the book?

What do I need to do in order to gain the most out of this course?

[pm100]

I just used the book. Didn't even find out about all the other options till later

[WBahn]

strawHat121 wrote

Hi everyone, I recently found out about Nand2Tetris and I want to learn it. But I am little bit confused as to what to do.

First of all there is a book, is that necessary to follow this? There is also a Coursera course and some pdfs and ppts present in the course section of the book here. Are those necessary alongside the book?

What do I need to do in order to gain the most out of this course?

Everything you need for the first half of the course is available free online from the website, including the first six chapters of the 1st edition of the book. You don't need to do the Coursera course, but I'm sure a lot of people find it helpful and, for some, it might be essential. Depends on how you best learn things. For the second half of the course, you need the book. I don't know if the Coursera course provides enough the material such that you don't need the book to accompany it or not, but my guess is that you need the book.

Fortunately, unlike most other college texts, the book is quite affordable. You can use either edition as the projects are the same. The second edition is better organized, especially the appendices, but the first edition is quite well written.

[Renslay]

I used the Coursera lectures, where they present the lectures in video form. I found them extremely useful, and that was my primary source of going through the course; and used the ppts as additional material and a summarization (if I had to check something, or search for something, that's easier to use than the videos).

Alas, the Coursera lectures used to be free to listen, you only needed to pay if you wanted a certificate, and an automated test on your solutions. If I understand well, it is not the case anymore.

In my opinion it very much worth it (I actually paid for the lectures later), but it's up to you.