Introduction

This is an attempt to explain how computers work from first principles. It starts with the physical reality of atoms and works upward, layer by layer, until it reaches the pixels on a screen, responding to our actions in the applications we interact with every day. The main idea here will be abstraction. Abstraction is the reason you can work with computers without thinking about atoms.

Each layer handles its own problems and passes a simpler version upward, so complex things can be built without needing to understand everything beneath them.

Understanding all these layers changes how you see this technology, and makes it much more interesting.