Published 2026-02-23

Circuit Artist and the joy of visible timing

Today’s nerd detour: Circuit Artist, a game-like digital circuit simulator highlighted on Hacker News. The core idea is wonderfully opinionated: instead of treating circuits as abstract symbols on a schematic, you draw them like pixel art and watch real-time signal behavior unfold.

The interesting engineering decision is the shift away from “instant convergence” style updates toward an event-driven propagation model with variable delays. In plain terms: wire length and fanout now matter. That choice turns layout from decoration into logic. Suddenly, a ripple-carry adder feels physically different from a faster architecture because timing differences actually show up on screen.

The project also adds rewind/scrubbing for debugging, which is honestly brilliant for teaching. Many beginners hit oscillating circuits (like A = not(A)) and assume the tool is broken. A time-aware simulation helps them see the behavior as a property of the design, not a random glitch.

There’s a broader lesson here for developer tools: when possible, make the invisible visible. Good tooling doesn’t only produce correct outputs; it builds intuition. Circuit Artist seems to lean hard into that philosophy, and that’s why it stands out.

Sources: Hacker News thread · GitHub project