13 videos · 10 hr 41 minComputers from the transistor up
A bottom-up path through the whole machine, made of the explainers and talks Hacker News keeps pointing people to. It opens with Feynman's plain-language picture of what a computer is, then climbs from a single transistor through logic, chip fabrication, a working CPU, memory and caches, the operating system, and ends with lexers, compilers and an interpreter. Watch in order; each video assumes roughly what the ones before it covered.
Play all on YouTube- 11:15:47
Richard Feynman Computer Science Lecture - Hardware, Software and Heuristics
Muon Ray · Picked by 8 · 2013–2026The welcoming opener: Feynman builds a computer out of a very dumb, very fast filing clerk, the picture to keep in mind for every layer that follows.
- 211:23
How a transistor works
Ben Eater · Picked by 4 · 2020–2023The bottom layer, in eleven minutes: Ben Eater explains what a transistor actually does, and HN calls it the most enlightening starting point.
- 313:02
Making logic gates from transistors
Ben Eater · Picked by 2 · 2019–2023One step up, Eater wires transistors into logic gates, the moment switches turn into something that can compute.
- 41:01:20
Indistinguishable From Magic: Manufacturing Modern Computer Chips
Andor Gafotas · Picked by 19 · 2016–2024How billions of those transistors get onto a chip; HN repeatedly calls this HOPE talk the best in-depth introduction to IC manufacturing for any background.
- 5
51:5727c3: Reverse Engineering the MOS 6502 CPU (en)
Christiaan008 · Picked by 2 · 2014–2021Going the other way, from die photos back to a transistor-level simulation, shows what a real CPU looks like as a physical layout of gates.
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27:25“Hello, world” from scratch on a 6502 — Part 1
Ben Eater · Picked by 11 · 2019–2026That same 6502 on a breadboard: Eater gets a working computer to say hello, which HN calls the best hands-on way to understand a CPU from first principles.
- 7
35:33How does Computer Memory Work? 💻🛠
Branch Education · Picked by 5 · 2022–2023Branch Education's animated tour of DRAM, from capacitor cells to how memory talks to the CPU, praised on HN for being detailed and still easy to follow.
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1:16:58code::dive conference 2014 - Scott Meyers: Cpu Caches and Why You Care
NOKIA Technology Center Wrocław · Picked by 3 · 2018–2023Between the CPU and that memory sit the caches, and Scott Meyers shows why they quietly decide how fast real programs run.
- 9
27:27AT&T Archives: The UNIX Operating System
AT&T Tech Channel · Picked by 10 · 2013–2026Up to the operating system: Kernighan, Thompson and Ritchie explain the kernel, the shell and pipes in a 1982 Bell Labs film HN calls incredibly clear.
- 10
42:54Containers From Scratch • Liz Rice • GOTO 2018
GOTO Conferences · Picked by 6 · 2018–2025Liz Rice live-codes a container in a few lines of Go, a hands-on look at the kernel features (namespaces, cgroups) a modern OS gives programs.
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51:18Lexical Scanning in Go - Rob Pike
GoogleFOSSSydney · Picked by 13 · 2012–2025The first step of any compiler, turning text into tokens, explained so elegantly by Rob Pike that HN says it is easy to follow with no parsing background.
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1:15:46CppCon 2017: Matt Godbolt “What Has My Compiler Done for Me Lately? Unbolting the Compiler's Lid”
CppCon · Picked by 7 · 2018–2022Matt Godbolt shows the assembly a compiler actually produces, tying the language layer back down to the CPU instructions from earlier in the list.
- 13
![Video frame: William Byrd on "The Most Beautiful Program Ever Written" [PWL NYC]](https://i.ytimg.com/vi/OyfBQmvr2Hc/hq2.jpg)
1:31:06William Byrd on "The Most Beautiful Program Ever Written" [PWL NYC]
PapersWeLove · Picked by 11 · 2017–2026The top of the stack: a Lisp interpreter written in Lisp, a fitting close where a language ends up describing itself.