Observe the world
Computer systems: one piece at a time
Not "memory management" or "networking", but "how far apart are a TLB miss and a page fault" and "how many round trips before the first byte" — one prompt drills one piece, until you can put a number on it.
These prompts only exist in 简体中文 for now.
How to use this
This set teaches rather than interrogates: it guides you instead of pressing until you have nothing left to say. When you're stuck it first asks which layer you're stuck at (never heard of it / know it but not why / know why but can't apply it), then decides what to give. Only after guiding you twice on the same point will it spell it out — and then it asks you to say it back in your own words.
It will keep pushing you for numbers: answer "there's some overhead" or "it's faster" and it cuts you off. A conclusion you can't put a number on is a memorised one — that's exactly what this set drills.
How to start
- Pick one, open it, copy the prompt.
- Paste it into a brand-new conversation, say nothing, and wait for its first question.
- Expect to be asked for orders of magnitude: how many nanoseconds, how many microseconds, how many times slower. Saying you don't know is fine — it notes it and moves on.
Four commands you can call out at any time
跳过move to the next scene now换个说法explain this bit again from another angle直说吧spell the answer out, then make me say it back复盘jump to the wrap-up and print the review card
Three traps
- Don't read the answer key at the end first — that "how people get it wrong" section is the answer to every question it will ask.
- Don't reach for the jargon. Saying "that's a TLB miss" is easy; saying how much cheaper it is than a page fault is the part that counts.
- When it starts praising you, point it back to the "don't praise me" rule. Guiding is not coddling.
Want a feel for the numbers? Start with random reads and the first-byte one. For production debugging: malloc, TCP stalls, context switches. Writing concurrent code: reordering and false sharing.