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🔌 Digital logic for kids

No programming language at all: this track starts with a single Nand gate and ends with a working CPU. And, Or, Xor, adders, an ALU, flip-flops, registers, memory and a program counter — each one wired from the gates you built in the lesson before.

Start the Chips track

How this track is kept honest

A gate-level simulator flattens your whole design down to Nand gates and clocked flip-flops and settles it, so "a computer is only Nand gates" is something a child can check rather than something we say. Every ready-made chip is written in the same language and bottoms out in Nand too — none of them cheat by calling JavaScript.

Needs no programming at all, and works well alongside Python. Inspired by nand2tetris, cut down to fit a phone screen.

How it starts

Inside a computer there are no words, no pictures and no numbers. There is only electricity in a wire — and it is either flowing or it is not. We write 1 for on and 0 for off. That is it. Everything else you have ever seen a computer do is built out of those two.

The full Chips syllabus

8 units and 38 lessons, in the order they are played. Each unit has a page of its own with every explanation in it, the code samples and what they print, and a few questions to try.

Unit 1: Signals

On, off, and one little gate

  1. On or Off
  2. The One Gate
  3. Drawing a Chip
  4. Flip It
  5. Two Flips

Unit 2: Gates

Both, either, different, neither

  1. Both
  2. Either
  3. Different
  4. Neither
  5. The Gate Family

Unit 3: Choosing

Sending signals down the right road

  1. Two Roads In
  2. Building Mux
  3. Two Roads Out
  4. The Switchboard

Unit 4: Numbers

Counting with nothing but on and off

  1. Counting on Two Fingers
  2. Eight Four Two One
  3. Asking a Number Questions
  4. Below Zero
  5. Reading the Wires

Unit 5: Adding

Sums out of switches

  1. Half an Adder
  2. Carrying
  3. Four Bits Wide
  4. Adding One
  5. The Adding Machine

Unit 6: The Calculator

One chip, many jobs

  1. One Box, Many Jobs
  2. Six Little Switches
  3. Taking Away
  4. Flags
  5. The Calculator

Unit 7: Memory

Chips that have a past

  1. Time
  2. The Flip-Flop
  3. Remembering on Purpose
  4. A Register
  5. Holding On

Unit 8: The Computer

Counting, choosing, remembering — in a circle

  1. Where Am I?
  2. Jumping
  3. Round and Round
  4. The Machine

Other things to learn

Start learning — units 1–2 are free