--- title: From Gates to CPUs | daily.dev description: A learning resource that guides you through building a computer from the ground up — starting with logic gates, progressing through circuit design,... canonical: https://daily.dev/posts/from-gates-to-cpus-tvclpm39c twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:site: @dailydotdev og:type: website og:site_name: daily.dev og:title: From Gates to CPUs | daily.dev og:description: A learning resource that guides you through building a computer from the ground up — starting with logic gates, progressing through circuit design,... og:url: https://daily.dev/posts/from-gates-to-cpus-tvclpm39c og:image: https://api.daily.dev/og/posts/tvCLPM39C.png og:image:alt: From Gates to CPUs og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 630 og:locale: en --- > ## Documentation Index > Fetch the complete documentation index at: https://daily.dev/llms.txt > Use this file to discover all available pages before exploring further. # From Gates to CPUs **[Hacker News](https://daily.dev/sources/hn)** · 1 min read · 0 upvotes · 0 comments ## Summary A learning resource that guides you through building a computer from the ground up — starting with logic gates, progressing through circuit design, constructing a CPU, and finally writing programs that run on the custom-built hardware. ## Full article daily.dev links to this article rather than hosting it. Read it at the original source: ## Community take How the wider developer community reacted, aggregated from 1 discussion and 99 comments across hackernews (as of 2026-07-30). **TL;DR:** The community finds ChipBuilder a cool concept but largely unpolished and buggy, with many UX issues (no drag-and-drop, clunky wiring modes, no progress saving) and broken test logic in several levels; comparisons to the more complete Turing Complete and NANDGame are frequent. **Sentiment:** 20% positive · 30% mixed · 50% skeptical **The case for** - The core concept of building up from logic gates to a full CPU in the browser is appreciated as a fun and approachable idea. - The author is responsive to feedback and pushed fixes (level skipping, wiring improvements) during the thread itself. - Some users found early levels genuinely enjoyable and educational. **The pushback** - Multiple levels have broken or non-existent tests (SR latch, memory, ALU passes with no circuit built), making progression impossible or meaningless. - UX is widely criticized: no drag-and-drop, separate select/wire/delete modes, no canvas panning, no progress saving, text selection interfering with dragging. - Several commenters label it vibe-coded slop, questioning the quality given the author's self-description as passionate about well-crafted products. - Established alternatives (Turing Complete, NANDGame, nand2tetris) are repeatedly recommended as superior options. - The 'Browse' link reportedly leads to a scam shopping site, and the Pipelining level is completely empty. **By community** - hackernews (skeptical): Most commenters are critical of the buggy UX and broken test logic, though a minority appreciate the concept and the author's responsiveness to feedback. **Hottest debate:** Whether the project qualifies as low-effort 'vibe-coded slop' or a legitimate work-in-progress worth encouraging. **Open questions** - Will progress saving be implemented so users don't lose their work on reload? - Will the broken levels (SR latch, memory, ALU, pipelining) be fixed with proper tests? - Why does the 'Browse' link lead to an unrelated shopping site? **Highlights** > That's a cool idea for a game, but the UX feels quite unintuitive and unpolished to me which discouraged me from playing past the first couple of levels. A few suggestions, if I may: - You should be able to drag/drop elements from the sidebar onto the canvas - Wiring shouldn't be a separate tool, and you should be able to drag/drop wires instead of having to click on the two endpoints separately - You should be able to delete the currently selected gate with the delete key, and the "delete" button in the toolbar should delete the currently selected gate instead of it being a separate tool - There's not enough contrast between the grid pattern and the background of the canvas - There seems to be some problems with moving overlapping components - There's no way to move around the canvas - The progress doesn't seem to save and there's no way to skip levels > — [ura\_yukimitsu on hackernews · 4 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49110625) > Oh lord, I went to the "ALU" example, did absolutely nothing, clicked "Run Tests" - YOU WIN You didn't test this thing at all, did you? > — [aappleby on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49114130) > pretty interesting that such lazy slop vibecoded into existence by "a software engineer passionate about well-crafted products." > — [artemonster on hackernews · 1 comments](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49110906) > > You start with basic logic gates like AND, OR, and NOT, then gradually combine them into adders, multiplexers, memory, an ALU, and eventually a complete CPU. Once you've built the hardware, you can write assembly programs that run on the processor you created. No you don’t. Once you get to memory you no longer have any tests that do anything and it’s impossible to actually progress. > — [Kirby64 on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49111269) > Turing Complete was super fun and is amazing. It felt like a years worth of computer engineering class packed into a week’s worth of well designed gameplay. IIRC someone built a working 32 bit RISC-V CPU with it. (Maybe this one? https://github.com/BenjaminSchaaf/turning-complete-riscv) My child just informed me that Turing Complete has just released a major redesign and that the engine is even faster than before. > — [dahart on hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49110980) **Source threads** - [hackernews](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49108571) · 45 points · 99 comments ## Similar posts on daily.dev - [Welcome to the machine: emulating a CPU — Bitfield Consulting](https://daily.dev/posts/welcome-to-the-machine-emulating-a-cpu-bitfield-consulting-rggljiotl) · Bitfield Consulting · 19 upvotes · 1 comments - [Building Your Own Operating System From Scratch \(A Practical Getting-Started Guide\)](https://daily.dev/posts/building-your-own-operating-system-from-scratch-a-practical-getting-started-guide--bcelcqpq7) · Medium · 0 upvotes · 0 comments - [Building My Own CPU - Part 3: Just Like the Simulations \(It Was Not Just Like The Simulations\)](https://daily.dev/posts/building-my-own-cpu---part-3-just-like-the-simulations-it-was-not-just-like-the-simulations--us6vslbqv) · Hacker News · 0 upvotes · 0 comments --- Tags: [#architecture](https://daily.dev/tags/architecture) [View this post on daily.dev](https://daily.dev/posts/from-gates-to-cpus-tvclpm39c) ```json {"@context":"https://schema.org","@graph":[{"@type":"Organization","@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180},"sameAs":["https://twitter.com/dailydotdev","https://github.com/dailydotdev","https://www.linkedin.com/company/daily-dev-ltd"]},{"@type":"WebSite","@id":"https://daily.dev/#website","url":"https://daily.dev","name":"daily.dev","publisher":{"@id":"https://daily.dev/#organization"},"potentialAction":{"@type":"SearchAction","target":{"@type":"EntryPoint","urlTemplate":"https://daily.dev/search?q={search_term_string}"},"query-input":"required name=search_term_string"}}]} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"TechArticle","headline":"From Gates to CPUs","url":"https://daily.dev/posts/from-gates-to-cpus-tvclpm39c","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://daily.dev/posts/from-gates-to-cpus-tvclpm39c"},"datePublished":"2026-07-30T14:09:53.416Z","dateModified":"2026-07-30T19:09:03.518Z","description":"A learning resource that guides you through building a computer from the ground up — starting with logic gates, progressing through circuit design,...","image":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/9ad6779d29cbe1c4fd363edccf8d35d3?_a=AQAEuop","thumbnailUrl":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/f_auto,q_auto/v1/posts/9ad6779d29cbe1c4fd363edccf8d35d3?_a=AQAEuop","isAccessibleForFree":true,"articleSection":"Hacker News","inLanguage":"en","publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"daily.dev","url":"https://daily.dev","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://daily.dev/apple-touch-icon.png","width":180,"height":180}},"author":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Hacker News","logo":"https://media.daily.dev/image/upload/t_logo,f_auto/v1/logos/hn","url":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},"commentCount":0,"discussionUrl":"https://daily.dev/posts/from-gates-to-cpus-tvclpm39c","interactionStatistic":[{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"LikeAction"},"userInteractionCount":0},{"@type":"InteractionCounter","interactionType":{"@type":"CommentAction"},"userInteractionCount":0}],"keywords":"architecture","timeRequired":"PT1M"} {"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"name":"Home","item":"https://daily.dev"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"name":"Hacker News","item":"https://daily.dev/sources/hn"},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"name":"From Gates to CPUs"}]} ```