Computer science: Add a lesson on the Von Neumann architechture

[RaihanSharif]

Checks

• This is not a duplicate of an existing issue (please have a look through our open issues list to make sure)
• I have thoroughly read and understand The Odin Project Contributing Guide
• Would you like to work on this issue?

Describe your suggestion

I think there should be a lesson on the Von Neumann architecture in the computer science section of the course.

In my opinion, it is not a very complex concept, but knowing it can really help students get to grips with things like call stacks, heaps as well as making it clearer why I/O and network access is so slow, making async functions necessary.

It doesn't have to be in depth, just a simple diagram to help visualise how data is passed around between I/O, CPU, memory as a program is loaded into memory and is executed.

Path

Other / NA

Lesson Url

https://www.theodinproject.com/paths/full-stack-javascript/courses/javascript#a-bit-of-computer-science

(Optional) Discord Name

freakzilla149

(Optional) Additional Comments

I asked on discord already, but this is just to get a discussion started. Would be good to see what the contributors think, and if you like the idea, discuss what specifically should or shouldn't be be in the lesson.

[rlmoser99]

Thank you for taking the time to make this issue and being willing to work on this additional content.

Can someone on the @TheOdinProject/ds-a team take a look at this suggestion?

[JoshDevHub]

I would be a bit interested in hearing more about two things:

1. Why would this be useful?
2. What would a very rough outline of the lesson look like? (basically can just give a list of topics you'd plan to hit on)

I'm probably leaning a bit towards "No" on this. Not because I think it's a useless concept, but because it requires some foundational computer science knowledge that our learners aren't equipped with. We don't have any lessons that talk about the CPU, memory, or any of these lower level details for how programs are read and executed. This would mean that a lesson may have to present a lot of background knowledge on this stuff, and I don't think the cost of that is worth the reward.