Computer Systems Fundamentals: A Complete CS Primer

Description

Computer Systems Fundamentals: A Complete CS Primer

The Computer Systems Fundamentals Primer offers a thorough introduction to the foundational concepts of computer science, providing a comprehensive roadmap for beginners and those looking to refresh their understanding of computer systems. This guide covers the basics of hardware, software, operating systems, and essential programming concepts, making it an invaluable resource for anyone aiming to build a strong grounding in computer systems fundamentals.

Course Overview

This primer takes you from the ground up, starting with the fundamental components that make up a computer system, including CPUs, memory, storage, and input/output devices. It then delves into how operating systems manage hardware and software resources, followed by an introduction to essential networking concepts and security protocols. This course is designed to provide a well-rounded introduction to the core areas of computer science and computing systems, offering both theoretical knowledge and practical applications.

What You’ll Learn

• Understand the architecture and components of computer systems
• Gain insight into the roles of operating systems in managing hardware
• Learn the basics of computer networking and data communication
• Explore fundamental concepts in software development and programming
• Understand basic cybersecurity principles and best practices

Requirements

This primer is suitable for beginners with no prior knowledge of computer science or computing systems. It is also beneficial for those with a basic background in technology who want to deepen their understanding of computer fundamentals.

Course Description

As software engineers, we study computer systems (also called “computer architecture”) to be able to understand how our programs ultimately run and how the machine expects our data to be encoded. Our immediate reward is to be able to write faster, more memory-efficient and more secure code.

Longer term, the value of understanding computer systems may be even greater. Every abstraction between us and the hardware leaks, to one degree or another. This course aims to provide a set of first principles from which to build sturdier mental models and reason more effectively.

We’ll start by considering the machine’s expectation of how our data is encoded, as well as some higher level binary representations like those for text. We’ll continue through introductory C and assembly programming, to better understand the interface that a typical computer provides for executing programs. Finally we’ll cover two important areas for improving program performance: utilizing the CPU microarchitecture, and CPU caches (the memory hierarchy).

Explore These Valuable Resources

• IEEE Computer Society: Computer Science Resources
• MIT OpenCourseWare: Computer Science Courses
• Codecademy: Programming and CS Fundamentals

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