Coding in the Classroom

3

Computer Science History

In this chapter, you’ll learn the technical details of every ­logical layer inside your computer, from what you see on your monitor to the electronic circuits that move bits of data. Learning this information is an exercise in decomposition. You’ll break down a highly complex system, the computer, into some of its smaller parts to understand them. Students familiar with the end-to-end operations of a computer will have deeper technical insights and appreciation of computer systems in general.

As we move down each layer of logic, we’ll travel through history, going back to times when those layers were primarily how humans worked with computers. We’ll go from the point-and-click interfaces we use today back to when ...