Nand2Tetris
Hacker ApprovedRanked 2 of 17 online courses by recommenders
People recommend it as a hands-on way to learn how computers work, from logic gates up to compilers. Critics note it skips microcode.
People recommend it as a hands-on way to learn how computers work, from logic gates up to compilers. Critics note it skips microcode.
34 people gave an opinion
- recommend it
- 31
- criticize it
- 3
- approval share
- 91%
Recommended in 10 of 13 months
- November 2025: recommended
- December 2025: recommended
- January 2026: recommended
- February 2026: recommended
- March 2026: not recommended
- April 2026: recommended
- May 2026: recommended
- June 2026: recommended
- July 2026: recommended
- August 2026: recommended
- September 2026: recommended
- October 2026: not recommended
- November 2026: not recommended (month in progress)
Why it carries the badge
- 31 people recommend itNeeds 10 or more, met.
- 10 recommenders for every criticNeeds 2 to 1 or better, met.
- Recommended in 10 of 13 monthsNeeds 4 or more, met.
The same three rules apply to every product, and the badge can’t be bought. How the badge works
What people say about it
The reasons people give, with the number of comments that give each one. Open a reason to read what they said.
Why people recommend it
Each mark is one comment
Explains computers from logic gates up
“nothing ever explained the whole domain from logic gates and inner workings of a CPU to compilers better than this course”
Comment from 15 Apr 2026 in “Want to Write a Compiler? Just Read These Two Papers (2008)” “if you want to get to at least the bottom most visible turtle you go with something like NAND to Tetris”
Comment from 15 Sep 2026 in “Linux from Scratch” “You get a view from nand-gate to software and get to see all the interfaces.”
Comment from 11 Jul 2026 in “Your code is fast – if you're lucky” - Comment from 26 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: What skills do you want to develop or improve in 2026?”
- Comment from 18 Nov 2025 in ““One Student One Chip” Course Homepage”
- Comment from 26 Jul 2026 in “Show HN: I made some transistor animations”
Hands-on projects make concepts stick
“If you work through a math problem with pen and paper or nand2tetris or nandgame.com then it becomes obvious”
Comment from 19 Jan 2026 in “Conditions in the Intel 8087 floating-point chip's microcode” “I combined it with a visual logic simulator so I could actually see the structures beyond the VHDL.”
Comment from 12 May 2026 in “Coursera and Udemy are now one company” “NAND2TETRIS is fun . For an experienced programmer the difficulty is almost akin to a game.”
Comment from 18 Nov 2025 in ““One Student One Chip” Course Homepage” - Comment from 3 Feb 2026 on Hacker News
Free course for self-learners
“You can get a rough idea of what you're getting into by going through the NAND2Tetris self-learning course”
Comment from 4 Dec 2025 in “Ask HN: How does one get involved in FPGA development?” “An abridged version of this book is available for free in the form of the Nand2Tetris course.”
Comment from 3 Feb 2026 on Hacker News “For people that don't have access to a uni, I recommend nand2tetris.org”
Comment from 23 May 2026 in “80386 Microcode Disassembled” Clear explanations of abstractions
“Prof. Schocken and Prof. Nisan are amazing at breaking down the concepts and abstractions”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)” “Definitely one of, if not the, most impactful bit of education I’ve ever done”
Comment from 14 Sep 2026 in “Ask HN: What are you working on? (September 2026)” “has been my favorite "computers are not magic" course for a long time”
Comment from 9 Feb 2026 in “Computers Can Be Understood”
What people warn about
Each mark is one comment
Skips microcode and low-level details
“that in itself is an amazing lesson and has been an inspiration, but that also means it skips things like microcode”
Comment from 23 May 2026 in “80386 Microcode Disassembled”
Other online courses people recommend
The four most recommended other online courses, with the same counts for each, so you can compare like for like. The tick on each bar marks the 2 to 1 line the badge needs.
| Product | Recommend | Criticize | Approval | Months | Owned | Badge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Math Academy | 35 | 1 | 97% | 12 | 9 mo6 owners | Approved |
| Nand2TetrisThis page | 31 | 3 | 91% | 10 | — | Approved |
| Neural Networks: Zero to Hero by Andrej Karpathy | 29 | 2 | 94% | 9 | — | Approved |
| CS193p SwiftUI course by Paul Hegarty | 13 | 1 | 93% | 2 | 11.9 yrs5 owners | — |
| CS336: Language Modeling from Scratch | 12 | 1 | 92% | 5 | — | Approved |
What people said
30 of the 34 comments that mention it, newest first. Each links to the original comment.
“the episode of "Nand to Tetris"”
“if you want to get to at least the bottom most visible turtle you go with something like NAND to Tetris”
“I only finished the first part - I got it working on Verilog”
“Prof. Schocken and Prof. Nisan are amazing at breaking down the concepts and abstractions”
“Definitely one of, if not the, most impactful bit of education I’ve ever done”
“It is not useless just because you can't build a chip factory.”
“they make certain design decisions so you don't have to dig through thousands of pages of manuals”
“to get the idea of how these machines work”
“In a similar vein, there's https://www.nand2tetris.org/”
“You get a view from nand-gate to software and get to see all the interfaces.”
“Understanding the global through lines in computer science give you immense power.”
“that in itself is an amazing lesson and has been an inspiration, but that also means it skips things like microcode”
“For people that don't have access to a uni, I recommend nand2tetris.org”
“I combined it with a visual logic simulator so I could actually see the structures beyond the VHDL.”
“put NAND to tetris behind a paywal after being free for like a decade”
“NAND-To-Tetris (even for the platform alone)”
“the official hardware simulator was pretty overwhelming”
“the nand-to-tetris book + resources”
“nothing ever explained the whole domain from logic gates and inner workings of a CPU to compilers better than this course”
“It sounds great, it remembers to me”
“"from nand to tetris" is another one”
“has been my favorite "computers are not magic" course for a long time”
“An abridged version of this book is available for free in the form of the Nand2Tetris course.”
“something like NAND to Tetris that forces you to learn low level concepts”
“If you work through a math problem with pen and paper or nand2tetris or nandgame.com then it becomes obvious”
“Regarding how computers work under the hood, i can recommend Nand2Tetris.”
“You can get a rough idea of what you're getting into by going through the NAND2Tetris self-learning course”
“There are some parts in nand2tetris that are not self-contained”
“NAND2TETRIS is fun . For an experienced programmer the difficulty is almost akin to a game.”
“a much more accessible intro to how CPUs work”
Counts come from 1,795,640 Hacker News comments, November 2025 to November 2026. How we count. Report a mistake.