Computing Systems

• The book describes a computing system as
  • The computer hardware, software and data which interact to solve problems.
  • I see four pieces:
    • Hardware - the physical components
    • Software - the programs that provide instructions for the hardware to execute
      • This is from the book.
      • I tried to do it myself, but couldn't find the words.
      • What "software" do you know?
    • Data - the information that is processed.
    • Solve problems.
      • I don't know about this.
      • Is "browsing the web" solving a problem?
      • Twitter/Facebook/Tic Tok
      • How about Elden Ring?
• I have an alternative definition: An electronic device which can run programs to store, retrieve and process data.
• The onion analogy
  • Computing systems, like onions, and ogres, have layers.
  • A video
  • 
  • They claim that no layer is too complex,
  • But when they are combined, they build an amazing system.
• The Layers
  1. Information
     • We will discuss the binary number system.
     • And how binary is used to encode, or represent, data.
  2. Hardware
     • The basic logic and gates that make up the foundation of computers.
     • How these gates are combined to form circuits
     • And how the circuits work together to form a "cpu" and the basic computer hardware.
  3. The programming layer
     • This layer looks at the various components that make up computer program.s
     • The lowest level machine language.
     • Assembly language
     • High level languages (c, c++, java, javascript, python, ...)
     • Constructs in programming languages
     • Data containers in programming languages.
  4. The Operating System layer
     • Windows, Mac OS, Linux, ...
     • We will look at a general idea on how these work.
  5. The Application Layer
     • What are the "big" things people are doing with computers.
  6. The Communication Layer
     • A discussion of networking, security and web applications.
  7. Outside of the layers
     • What things can a computer not do?