Check out some videos by Ben Eater on Youtube

+1 to Ben Eater! His videos helped me so much during university, it was like finding real gold between fool's gold.

Ben Eater routinely makes me feel ashamed of how awful my breadboard wiring looks. Fantastic videos.

To be fair, all the wires he uses are pre-cut / pre-shaped for the video. The videos are meticulously planned and marvelously executed. Normally hobby projects do not have nearly as much thought put into them.

I've been taking the time to perfectly measure out all the wires on my 8-bit because I don't mind the monotony, its kind of peaceful. But holy hell it takes a long time.

Its like 95% measuring and cutting, 5% thinking, testing and debugging.

Its a bit of a welcome relief from software, which is 95% thinking and 5% typing. A bit of monotony might be good for the brain.

Unless your name is Ben, in which case I'd advise caution.

yes, these are great!

This is written for young people, but still accurate: Code: The Hidden Language of Computer Hardware and Software by Charles Petzold

Link: https://www.amazon.com/Code-Language-Computer-Hardware-Softw...

It's got a very slow, methodical onramp with a lot of diagrams and a light, breezy style. You end up building a (very simple) computer in the end, including instruction processing.

The textbooks by Hennessy and Patterson are the definitive ones.

The textbooks by Hennessy and Patterson are the definitive ones. I think every programmer would be very well served reading them. There's older editions available online for free that are perfectly adequate for understanding the big picture.