It all begins from Abacus

Joshua Levy — Thu, 02 Jul 2020 06:14:58 +0000

For me, starting out as a total beginner was getting to grips with the whole 1 to 10 numbering system and "transforming" it to 0 to 9. Therefore, for me to understand this, I took a look at the abacus, an adder.

The abacus, also called a counting frame, is a calculating tool that was in use in the ancient Near East, Europe, China, and Russia, centuries before the adoption of the written Arabic numeral system. The exact origin of the abacus is still unknown. Today, abacuses are often constructed as a bamboo frame with beads sliding on wires, but originally they were beans or stones moved in grooves of sand or on tablets of wood, stone, or metal.

View on Wikipedia

Tracing it's origins dating back 5000 years, I saw there is no number 10. It begins from 0 and ends with a 9, for creating the number 10, you need two lines - 1 + 0 which effectively reads as 10. Here lies the origins of the computer system and all it's science associated with it.

As I embark on my degree-less journey to computer science. It is important to debunk some of the myths surrounding this field of science, which I observed during my research.

1. Mythbuster - You must be mathematical genius

Contrary to what most people, no you DON'T have to be mathematical genius. Any person, from the street, clever, idiot, foolish or anyone who you might think can do computer science. The only thing what matters is the thinking mindset, I will come to this a bit later.

2. Mythbuster - You become a computer engineer by getting an engineering degree!

No you don't!, the main reason is that computer science is applied science, which means you need to apply what you learnt during your course at a university or a college. I know many engineers who call themselves engineers, and yet don't know how to code properly or think analytically.

3. Mythbuster - You think you are an engineer by randomly start learning some programming language, just because it's the most popular language.

Again this is not true! and let me explain, learning a language (be it C, Python, English, Japanese, Russian, Hindi, C++, etc..) is one thing, and applying it in reality is quite another thing. The most important thing is what can you do with it, and this will effectively command your respect and income with employers and peers. It's like saying I can speak English, by learning from some English grammar book, but I cannot hold conversations in English!. The same principle applies in computer language as well. Our brain uses the simple principle in learning, there is absolutely no difference either learning physical language or computer language, for your brain it's the same thing. If you are good in whatever language you learnt, you be employable.

For me, it is important to understand the very basics of computers, i.e., getting down to 0s and 1s and understand how they work and how I can work with them. In the next section I will outline my learning process and roadmap.

Please feel free to add your viewpoints in the comments below.

Computer Engineering total beginner

Joshua Levy — Tue, 30 Jun 2020 04:24:41 +0000

Introduction 👋

Since childhood, tinkering with computers was a favourite pastime hobby of mine, I always wanted to do something cool with them. I remember as a school kid in India, when my father bought Intel Pentium-1 computer, it was a huge machine, in my spare time I used to open the computer case unit, and just explore the gigantic power supply, components, RAM sticks and a massive fan stuck on top of the processor.

At the time, I if I remember correctly, we had Windows 95 on floppy disks loaded. Yeah, the computer was awfully slow, but for that day and age, the system was mighty fast. I think the internet was a dialup at that time, so the speed was around 14.4 kbps, and I loved to use the back-then browser "Netscape" and just loved surfing the MSN.COM website haha. Fast forwarding time, I didn't properly get the opportunity to learn the so-called "computer science" which most people equate to being "Medicine" you have to choose a specific field and build your career path on it. Nevertheless, I guess I had to begin somewhere.

Where to begin?

Given all the hype surrounding the Raspberry Pi and Arduino, I was always very curious as to what they can do?, how powerful they are, and why hobbyists tout them to be the "tinkering Pandora's Box" so to speak. That all changed, when I finally bought one!

Curiosity sparks interest

Given the lockdown situation due to the #Coronavirus pandemic in Russia, and with me being bored easily, (I get bored if I don't so something with my hands lol) I took the plunge and went to my local computer shop - supereyes.ru and bought an Arduino development box kit and a Raspberry Pi. I bought an LCD monitor, SD card and connected the Pi together and voila! the Pi came to life, and it was unbelievable for me to see a tiny computer, playing a 1080p HD video on YouTube kitted out with a full Raspbian OS, all this running on a battery pack!

I began searching online tutorials on how to connect the Arduino to the computer, install software and run my first ever hardware project - blinking LED 😝. For this project I bought a small breadboard, used an LED and connected the LED to the GPIO (General Input Output) PIN of the Arduino, but I forgot to add a resister (bearing in mind, I didn't know how resister works) and evidently, the LED burnt out 😂

After consulting with Daniela, my university friend from Vienna (she is senior software engineer and a data scientist, and studied electronic engineering at the University of Vienna), she told me "Josh, you need a ******* resister to reduce the current and voltage for the LED to work lol, you just can't connect any power input to the LED and expect it to "just work"" 😂

The journey begins

Having sparked my curiosity, I wanted to build more stuff, but didn't know where to begin. I searched all over the internet and found numerous albeit conflicting advice on how to "start YOUR journey towards computer science" some said, start from Python, others said start from bla bla bla... you get the idea 👀

Confronting your fears

Yes, I could have started from Python, being dubbed "the easiest language in the world", instead I decided to confront my phobia of maths! -> start from the ground up, i.e., binary numbers!, and then go on to Boolean Algebra, which in my opinion is the fundamental building block for computer science.

In my next post, I will be writing about my journey to computer science, my courses and progress I have done. If you like what you read, feel free to comment below. See you all soon, Josh.