Amazing course. I've always wondered how a computer just handles "information", displaying nice images on a screen and allowing magical user interaction. We live in a physical world, so what is physically happening? This course shows you what happens under the hood. And it's very project-centered, so plenty of hands-on learning.

This course was amazing. Despite being a computer science student, I had no real intuition as to how the different computer abstractions worked or how the simple AND,OR gates did everything the a computer could do. I've just finished the firsst part and am already amazed at how much I've learned. I look forward to the next part!

This is an excellent course that is very well-designed to include all the essential details and exclude the inessential ones. I recommend it very highly, especially to those who have some form of technical education, but may never have learned these topics in computer design that are needed to really get from logic gate to CPU.

This was a fantastic course. I'd bought the textbook a few years ago after reading about it on HackerNews, but never had the motivation to work through it until I discovered this class on Coursera. I feel like I now have a much better grasp of what's going on inside of a computer, after having programmed for over thirty years!

Excellent course! I was left mind-blown (in a good, exciting way) at times when I learned how different parts of the computer, such as the CPU or ALU actually work with just logic gates. The programming exercises are a great way to test understanding and they each make one think hard to reach the solution. Highly recommended!

I have always wanted to know how a computer actually works. This course helped me to deep dive into the low level implementation of a computer. In the meanwhile, the projects are perfectly well organized for better understandings. Overall, I'd like to recommend this course to literally everyone who is interested in computers.

One of the best courses I have ever been through. If you like learning along with getting hands-on experience and the joy of building something ground-up, this course is definitely for you. I like how the designs are so simple yet completely functional. Thoroughly enjoyed making all the projects especially week 6 (Assembler).

Great course, but tough. I'd suggest reading the relevant chapters from the professors' book 'The Elements of Computing Systems' (chapters available for free on the professors' course website) in addition to listening to the lectures. I also read 'Code' by Charles Petzold as I took the course and found it a useful supplement.

A wonderful course. The tasks are not very hard, but challenging enough for a student to get things working. Even for auditing students, they provide ways to verify the knowledge. I think they completely achieved their goal of demystifying how computers work and are built. Thank you for the opportunity to attend this course.

While some of earlier topics were a bit rushed, Week 6 videos were just about explaining the assembler algorithm to the programmer, which is something programmer should invent himself, it takes away the fun, while providing no further insight into the topic. Overall great course, but it did not go very deep into some topics.

A fantastic course that should be considered as a requirement for any one working as a software developer. The tutors did an excellent job here, the course material was clear, and the assignments were fun and rewarding.

I can honestly say I've now built my own computer from simple Nand gates and it was fun and educational.

Excellent course, I could understand from a simple logic gate how a computer hardware is built. Very useful for both student and professionals in Computer field.

The presentation was to the point very clear and crisp. Both the faculty did an amazing job in presentng the material of the course as well as the assignments.

Quality of teaching, materials is superb. The whole course concept is quite astounding and delivered brilliantly. The projects are superbly designed. A lot of superlatives in this review, but this is streets ahead of how the subject matter was taught in my university days. It is worth getting the accompanying book.

This course was amazing. I have been using computers, and programming, for 30 years (not full time). Now I finally have a deep understanding of what is going on under the hood. I have a new appreciation for the 1's and 0's that are machine language. The instructors were fantastic. I highly recommend this course.

I originally learned a lot of this in university about 8 years ago, however this course was much better in its execution, the projects were fun and well defined and the presentations were succinct. It was a great sense of accomplishment at the end to have a working computer where you understand all the moving parts.

Even though I knew quite a bit about the later parts of the course, I still learned a lot from them. Not to mention that HDL and hardware parts thought me a lot as I lacked some knowledge on that front. Overall a great course that I would recommend to anyone who is interested in learning everything about computers.

Fantastic course! Very digestible and relatively well explained. I struggled a couple times with the projects but generally it was just syntax errors and I was able to find help with the course discussions. I knew very little about computer architecture before and now feel comfortable to take higher level courses.

This is the best course i have ever taken. It satisfied my quest to understand how computers work ground up with 100% practical and recommend it to anyone that wants to also.

Adding Quiz to test the understanding of the theory will make it even better.

A very big thank you to Shimon Schocken and Noam Nisan.

This is such a great course.

It is very well taught and the material is thorough but understandable.

The concept of the course was so interesting to me and the execution was excellent.

This is an extremely enjoyable course and I would highly recommend it, whether you have a computer science background or not.

Excellent course! I have taken many in Coursera, and this one is by far the one I have enjoyed the most, not only because of the topic but also because of the professors. Both are great communicators and provided very well prepared classes and materials. 100% recommended, looking forward to starting part 2.

It's an excellent practical approach to understand the inner workings of a computer at a very low level. The instructors teach at a comfortable pace and cover in great detail even the simplest of topics. More light could have been shone on how and why the control bits produce the desired output in the ALU.

Absolutely superb course! It's was supremely satisfying to build an actual virtual working computer from scratch and see it play Pong! I commend the course creators for distilling something that's usually seen as mysterious and complicated into an accessible and tangible form. Can't wait to finish Part 2!

Nice project and interesting . The learning curve is not too steep for a beginner and the course itself can be considered as a solid funding block for a programmer interested in low level programming. The project which is spread over the 6 modules is an on going application of the abstraction principle.

It was quite challenging at certain points, and it also required more time on my part than what I had expected, but it certainly was worth the effort. Many concepts at the core of microcomputer technology have become much clearer. I have found the course very rewarding in terms of knowledge acquired.

Loved this course. Great progression from concept to concept. Huge feeling of accomplishment at each step of the way as you create a working, functioning 16-bit computer. Can't wait to do Part II. Fast, responsive help from the mentors as well. I was always able to get the answers to my questions.