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Volume 1 — Computer Science Foundations

How machines actually work

Before a single line of Python, you need a working mental model of what a computer is doing. This volume builds it from the transistor up: binary, memory, storage, processes, networks and the cost model that explains why some code is fast and some is not.

Partly available

Some lessons in this volume are written; the remainder are outlined below and not yet authored.

What you will be able to do

  • Explain what happens between pressing Enter and seeing output
  • Reason about memory vs disk and why that dominates performance
  • Read Big-O notation and apply it to your own code
  • Debug an encoding error instead of guessing at it

Chapters

  1. Bits, bytes and how anything is represented
  2. Memory, storage and the speed hierarchy
  3. Processes, threads and the operating system
  4. How a program becomes a running thing
  5. Networks, the internet and HTTP from first principles
  6. Complexity and the cost model of code
  7. Text, encodings and Unicode
  8. Numbers: integers, floats and why 0.1 + 0.2 surprises you

Lessons available now

These lessons come from the Version 1 course and are complete.

Why Python, and How It Runs

All volumes