Professor Shimon Schocken spoke with us about teaching computer science from NAND logic gates to arithmetic units, micro assembly, virtual machines, compilers, operating systems, and the Tetris games. We also talk about good design, good interfaces, and good tests.

Shimon’s book is Elements of Computing Systems and the website with the course lecture notes, slides, videos, simulators, and everything you need is nand2tetris.org.

Shimon mentioned his work with teaching math, that is www.matific.com. You can find out more about Shimon’s other projects on his site shimonschocken.com (including his fascinating TED talk: The self-organizing computer course).

Shimon’s co-author is Noam Nisan who also wrote about understanding logic systems (look, anytime we can bring up Gödel's incompleteness theorems, we will).

We talked about Tim Bell’s CS Unplugged, teaching computer science concepts without a computer. It comes in Classic and Modern flavors.

Transcript

Memfault is a leading embedded device observability platform that empowers teams to build better IoT products, faster. Its off-the-shelf solution is specifically designed for bandwidth-constrained devices, offering device performance and product analytics, debugging, and over-the-air capabilities. Trusted by leading brands such as Bose, Lyft, Logitech, Panasonic, and Augury, Memfault improves the reliability of devices across consumer electronics and mission-critical industries such as access control, point of sale, energy, and healthcare. To learn more, visit memfault.com.

Professor Cindy Harnett spoke to us about new and different sensors and actuators, primarily designed for soft robotics and fabricated with relatively low cost materials.

Cindy is a professor of electrical and computer engineering at the University of Louisville where she runs the Harnett Lab.

The papers we discussed are here. You can find a longer list of Cindy’s papers on Google Scholar. The video of the SESAME actuator is especially interesting.

Transcript

Nordic Semiconductor has been the driving force for Bluetooth Low Energy MCUs and wireless SoCs since the early 2010s, and they offer solutions for low-power Wi-Fi and global Cellular IoT as well. If you plan on developing robust and battery-operated applications, check out their hardware, software, tools, and services.

On academy.nordicsemi.com, you’ll find Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and cellular IoT courses, and the Nordic DevZone community covers technical questions: devzone.nordicsemi.com.

Oh, and don’t forget to enter Nordic Semiconductor’s giveaway contest! Just fill out the entrance form, and you're in the running. Good luck!

Debra Ansell joined us to talk about finding friends and exchanging neat gifts, accidentally tricking people into making unmanufacutable boards, and happy, blinking lights.

Debra is usually known by the moniker GeekMomProjects (also her website is geekmomprojects.com). She has been writing for Make Magazine.

Debra won one of the SuperCon badge add-on awards so her poseable Bendy SAO will be available at SuperCon Europe.

Some other things we mentioned:

• Seeed Studio XIAO board

• Adafruit QT Py

• Debra’s Remoticon talk about PCB structures

• Martin Oehler is Maketvee on YouTube and Mastodon

• Janet Hansen is on Mastodon and has an incredible Enlightened Designs wearables website.

• #makergiftexchange on your favorite social media platform

And some upcoming events that promise to have lots of LEDs:

• Teardown 2025 | Crowd Supply (Jun ‘25)

• Portland Winter Light Festival (Feb ‘25)

Transcript

Memfault is a leading embedded device observability platform that empowers teams to build better IoT products, faster. Its off-the-shelf solution is specifically designed for bandwidth-constrained devices, offering device performance and product analytics, debugging, and over-the-air capabilities. Trusted by leading brands such as Bose, Lyft, Logitech, Panasonic, and Augury, Memfault improves the reliability of devices across consumer electronics and mission-critical industries such as access control, point of sale, energy, and healthcare. To learn more, visit memfault.com.