Would you voluntarily spend another five hours on this kind of problem? Why?
Hardware Engineering · 60–90 min
Design and verify a tiny logic circuit
Feel hardware design as a specification, circuit and independent verification—not just wiring a demo.
Start the experiment01 · Setup
What you need
- Basic Boolean logic and the free Nand2Tetris hardware simulator set up using its official software page. Setup time is separate; no physical hardware or purchase is needed.
You may stop when the timebox ends. An incomplete result is still useful evidence.
02 · Task
The work sequence
- 01
Choose an AND gate built from NAND gates. Before implementation, write expected outputs for all four input combinations.
- 02
Implement the circuit in the simulator’s HDL, drawing how the intermediate signal connects.
- 03
Test all four cases against your independent truth table; record actual outputs.
- 04
Deliberately miswire one connection in a copy, find a failing case and explain the cause. Restore the correct circuit and rerun every case.
- 05
Save the design, test table and a short limitation note: this verifies ideal logic, not physical timing, power or electrical safety.
03 · Pay attention
Watch your reaction, not only the output
- Did an exhaustive truth table reveal something a single successful demo would miss?
- Would you like to investigate how real timing and component limits change this model?
Plot twist
Difficulty does not mean the career is a bad fit. The useful question is whether curiosity returned after the difficulty.
04 · Reflect
Three honest questions
Which part gave you energy, and which part drained it?
What evidence—not a salary video—would you gather before choosing this path?
This site does not save your answers. Put them in your own notebook if useful.
05 · Where to go next