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Comment by timsally | Hacker News Reader

If you're interested in this type of stuff I can personally recommend MIT's 6.828 course (Operating Systems Engineering) as an additional resource. Specifically, you'll want to take a look at xv6, a teaching OS implemented for the course (http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2014/xv6.html). The OS is small enough to print as cross referenced code listing (http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2014/xv6/xv6-rev8.pdf) and has a book that fully explains each piece (http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2014/xv6/book-rev8.pdf). You are only 9,000 lines of code away from fully understanding basic operating systems concepts!

It's been a few years since I took the class but it was an absolute blast. The offering in 2011 has recorded lecture videos (http://pdos.csail.mit.edu/6.828/2011/schedule.html).

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Thanks for posting. I hope this material is available for years to come.

Have you done any work in a related project after taking this course?

Yes I work professionally in the field.

Any advice for us OS wannabees? ;)

Sorry just saw this comment. Work your way through the 6.828 course because the presentation of concepts in that course is as fundamental and bite-size as it gets. Then when you get to real operating systems (which are much uglier than xv6), don't be intimidated by the complexity. For any difficult subject, there's always a point along the learning curve where things seem hopeless but if you push through you'll start to gain glimpses of understanding. These glimpses provide motivation which in turn lets you understand more... eventually process of learning becomes self sustaining.

No worries. Thanks for the pointers. The next time I find myself not doing a startup, I'm going to take that course!

The videos have been very horribly recorded though! Seem to have been recorded by a student.

Yes. It is astonishing how institutes with huge budgets put videos like these (it is quite common with such big names as MIT).

> Yes. It is astonishing how institutes with huge budgets put videos like these (it is quite common with such big names as MIT).

Yes if only MIT spent some money and made high quality videos available for free to millions of people...

https://www.edx.org/course-list/mitx/allsubjects/allcourses

Have you seen MIT OCW videos?

If it were altruism I'd applaud any effort. But their alailable lectures seem to be a bid to bring more students in to full enrollment. Poor video quality, as long as the awesomeness of the course itself can be seen, doesn't work against this goal.

If it were altruism they would soon enough be out of business and in the future content like this would no longer be made available.

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