If You Can Cook You Can Code Vol 3: Learn Computer Hardware

Course details

The If You Can Cook You Can Code series started off as a single course and an idea, to teach students with no previous experience with computers or programming how computer code works at a beginners level.

In reality, code is just one half of the picture.

The other half is the hardware that the code runs on.

To have a complete understanding of how code works, you have to understand computer hardware.

In this course, you'll go on a tour of the various components inside a computer that make it work.

And we'll be using the same cooking and kitchen metaphors that you've come to expect.

The inside of your computer is like the kitchen in a restaurant.

If you are a diner sitting at a table, you never see inside it, just like you normally have no reason to look inside your computer to see what is going on.

There are certain components in a computer that you may already be aware of.

The CPU, for example, which does the thinking and processing in a computer. The CPU is like the Chef in the kitchen. It's the center of everything that happens and makes all the decisions.

Another component is the RAM, or memory in a computer. You've probably heard about this one before too...computers these days have 4, 8 or 16 GB of RAM usually. Well, that RAM is just like the counter and cutting board that a Chef uses in the kitchen to do their work. If they have lots of space to work with, they can have lots of bowls and pans and dishes for different parts of the meal they are working on.

In the same way, having a computer with more RAM means you can have more applications running at the same time, or more tabs open in your browser without things slowing down to a crawl. The RAM is the kitchen table or counter where the CPU (aka the Chef) does their processing work.

The third major thing you've probably heard about in your computer is your hard drive. The storage space is also measured in GB, so it can get confusing between what is "memory" and what is hard drive space.

Here's the difference:

In your kitchen, you have counter space where you do your Chef-thing, and then you have your cabinets, shelves, pantry, etc where you do your storage-thing.

You can measure both in square feet, (but why would you?) and you would find that you have much more storage space in your shelves than you do on your kitchen counter.

Same thing with your RAM and your hard drive. You might have 4 or 8 GB of RAM in your computer, but 500 GB or even 1 TB (1,000 GB) of storage space on your hard drive.

In this course we'll all the other parts of your computer using these same kitchen and restaurant metaphors.

If you've always wanted to understand how computers worked, but found other guides or books too complicated or technical, this is the course for you.

Also, remember if you have any question I'm available in the discussion section.

See you on the inside,

Timothy