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by aleph_minus_one 914 days ago
The two online courses at Coursera are based on the First Edition of "The Elements of Computing Systems: Building a Modern Computer from First Principles": https://www.amazon.com/Elements-Computing-Systems-Building-P...

The most recent edition of this book is the Second Edition: https://www.amazon.com/dp/0262539802/

To quote from the Preface concerning what the difference between these two editions is:

"The Second Edition

Although Nand to Tetris was always structured around two themes, the second edition makes this structure explicit: The book is now divided into two distinct and standalone parts, Part I: Hardware and Part II: Software. Each part consists of six chapters and six projects and begins with a newly written introduction that sets the stage for the part’s chapters. Importantly, the two parts are independent of each other. Thus, the new book structure lends itself well to quarter-long as well as semester-long courses.

In addition to the two new introduction chapters, the second edition features four new appendices. Following the requests of many learners, these new appendices give focused presentations of various technical topics that, in the first edition, were scattered across the chapters. Another new appendix provides a formal proof that any Boolean function can be built from Nand operators, adding a theoretical perspective to the applied hardware construction projects. Many new sections, figures, and examples were added.

All the chapters and project materials were rewritten with an emphasis on separating abstraction from implementation—a major theme in Nand to Tetris. We took special care to add examples and sections that address the thousands of questions that were posted over the years in Nand to Tetris Q&A forums."