I just searched online and was taken aback by the lack of content I could find , there are millions of video for different small niche things by hundred of people which are right and wrong about things but the most I could even find about how chips are made today are the ones explaining how silicon works etc. LTT is the only one which even have a factory video and it is too very censored uninformative and useless for my questions .

1 - I get that light is flashed in binary to code chips but how does it actually fookin work ? What is the machine emmiting this light made up of ? How does this flashing light hold as data forever on chip ?

2 - How was program’s, OSs, Kernal etc loaded on CPU in early days when there were no additional computers to feed it those like today ?

3 - I get internet is light storing information but how ? Fookin HOW ?

4 - How did it all come to be like it is today and ist it possible for one human to even learn how it all works or are we just limited one or two things ? Like cab we only know how to program or how to make hardware but not both or all ?

5 - Do we have to join Intel first or something to learn how most of the things work lol ? Cause the info available online about the software, hardware, skills etc is shit ? Not even RISC-V documentary are available .

Context - Just started learning python and got philosophical to how all things came to be ? Is just making apps or websites even a thing worth learning in the grand scheme of things ? I get that some people is just okay with that but come on have you never thought about how the deep you can go ?

anyway feel free to tell me to stfu and I’m sorry if sub=wrong and will move on request . And as the username suggest I’ll be posting questions as I have them and thanks.

ALSO ELI5 everything please

  • thouartfrugal@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Just an old hobbyist here. Often I count myself lucky having grown up when a state-of-the-art home computer was a Commodore 64. Rightly or wrongly, I believe it’s quite possible for one human being to completely grasp what that machine is doing from the moment the power switch is turned on through to the end of running a complex self-written program. Not that it’s at the heart of your question(s) but that’s where my curiosity started. In those days any user had to know just a bit of the BASIC programming language, even if just to list the contents of a floppy disk or to load a pre-written program. I am always astounded at what people with much more dedication are able to do with a C64 to this day in the demoscene. The more generous among them make their discoveries digestible to mere mortals at sites such as codebase64.org. That’s a kind of comfort zone for me. Getting into something like a 386 PC and I start to feel overwhelmed. Maybe consider dipping back a bit into history if it sounds appealing?

    As to semiconductor fabrication, I found this unconventional book by Clive Maxfield to be very helpful in clarifying some things I was curious about.

    Some excellent stories from the heyday of MOS Technology in the first in this book series by Brian Bagnall. That’s the company that produced the popular 6502 family of 8-bit CPU that powered machines from Apple to Nintendo and many in between. Also where the custom chips were brought to life that formed the heart of the C64. One excerpt I often think back on were engineers laying flat on raised creepers, cutting the layout of their CPU-to-be out of huge sheets of vellum.

    5 - Do we have to join Intel first or something to learn how most of the things work lol ?

    May not be as far-fetched as you think. I’ve worked in Intel’s semiconductor factories, and Micron’s, and some others whose names aren’t widely known but whose products made things like the iPhone possible. Not cause I’m well-educated or have any particular talent, just that in a volatile marketplace such as this one there are ebbs and flows in demand for headcount in entry-level positions. Draft up a resume highlighting your critical thinking skills and willingness to learn and watch the recruiters from the staffing agencies fill your email inbox. I’ve had the good fortune to learn such processes as photolithography, thin-films, dry/wet etch, metrology, planarization, die sort (test), and on and on. Whether you’d like to operate the semiconductor tools, push the production metrics or maintain the equipment there just may be a need for you somewhere today.