Ben Eater's breadboard computer is mentioned there, and unfortunately I couldn't reply to say thanks because the thread is too old.
For us programmers how the hardware works feels like magic, and his videos demystify that magic. The best educational value is seeing how he troubleshoots hardware problems.
Just in case it interests anyone, it sounds similar to NandGame (http://nandgame.com/), which is an online game where the challenge is to progressively build a microprocessor, starting from simple logic gates.
If you're into these types of games, I'd also recommend taking a look at the Zachtronics ones, in particular EXAPUNKS and Shenzen I/O, where you use pseudo-assembly to solve puzzles: https://www.zachtronics.com
I've recently finished the game, except for the assembly challenges, and apart from the sometimes too aggressive hand-holding (let me make my own instructions as soon as possible), it's a lot of fun.
I've gifted a copy to my sister, who appreciated it helping her understand boolean algebra for her high school assignments.
I've been playing this a bunch, one assembly puzzle left. All in all it is an excellent game.
I've been studying assembly, mainly from the book, Systems A Programmer's Perspective. Which is an excelleng book, but this game really brought together what I was learning in there. I will be going back and starting it the book again.
As for the game, the developer has been extremely active, puts out multiple patches a day, and is very responsive on bug reports. I've submitted a couple myself. The game still has some rough edges, occasional crashes and the like, but there is only one developer working on it and those things do take a bit of time to track down.
There are a bunch of additions planned for it, 64bit width components, and a number of new puzzles. I look forward to that. The end state of the game leaves you with a sandbox and a number of the community of players have created some very interesting things, such as pipelined registers and a synth in there. Just about every puzzle has been solved with an ASIC of some sort too.
I have started playing it this weekend and it is tons of fun! Still in beta, but the author(s) seem to update regularly fixing bugs and extending the game.
Yeah, keep in mind there's been a couple of times where he's just deleted components completely and fucked up some circuit designs. It's 90% stable, just be aware it's still being actively worked on.
Based on the demo video, it looks like one step "missing" is that you don't manually implement the assembler in machine code. For those of you who have played: is this true? If so I totally get the omission, but I'm just curious.
can this be played on linux? what is the meaning of `steamos + linux'? if `+' stands for combination, how does one combine two operating systems? or is `+' simply an unconventional `and'?
does that mean steamos and non-steamos linux or steamos (which is a linux)? it would be nice to know whether playing this required installing a new operating system.
It means the game has a native version for Linux that will run on all Linux distros (what you referred to as a Linux). SteamOS is based on Debian (or most recently Arch) and Valve only officially supports Steam on Ubuntu LTS. But Steam will run on pretty much any distro you want.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28735441 (201 points/42 comments)