Holy carp, you guys. Getting a computer to do math is hard.
Project 2 looks pretty simple at the outset: build a half-adder (which I get), a full adder (which I also get), an adder (which I kinda get), an incrementer (which I so get that I almost forgot about it), and an arithmetic logic unit (which I don't get at all). Something about that ALU is just irreducibly magical to me right now, and I'm not quite certain why.
I gave up and went to sleep, resolving to get up in the morning and take another crack at it. I had hoped that the magic would go away, perhaps by more magic, but no dice. I'm beating my head against the wall right now on this, which means it's time to do something else and then come back to this later. If this were one class among many, I'd be tempted to "look for outside inspiration" (i.e. cheat); but I am under no such constraints, and that would simply defeat the purpose of the intellectual exercise (i.e. to learn). So I'm calling it quits for now.
After today's errands, I'm going to take another pass at Hula and update the beta (assuming I don't just break it over and over again). So that's something for day 24, and on day 25 I'll take another crack at project 2 after I've had some time off to let my failures sink in and learn some lessons from them. OK, plan is planned, now execution just needs to be executed.
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