This book is based on the premise that starting with a high level programming language is not the best approach. The reason most students do not understand a programming language when they take it as a first course is because they are forced to memorize technical details. They do not understand the basic underpinnings of how a computer works. The result of this thought is the motivated bottom-up approach found in Patt/Patel's "Introduction To Computing Systems. This text starts with the logic structures and architecture of a computer and moves up to the application software that runs on it. The book covers in turn: switch level abstraction of a MOS Transistor, Logic Gates, latches, logic structures (MUX, Decoder, Adder, gated latches), finally culminating in an implementation of memory. From there, the book moves on to the Von Neumann model of execution, then a simple computer (the LC-2), machine language programming, assembly language, assemblers and then assembly language programming of the LC-2. The book then moves to the high level language C, recursion, and finally elementary data structures.

The book establishes a foundation that every subsequent course in the computer science or computer engineering curriculum can benefit from and build on.