Date: Tue, 14 Oct 1997 07:53:43 -0600 (MDT) From: Nate Williams <nate@mt.sri.com> To: Wes Peters <softweyr@xmission.com> Cc: Stephen McKay <syssgm@dtir.qld.gov.au>, bde@freebsd.org, chat@freebsd.org Subject: Re: FreeBSD for Operating Systems Course Message-ID: <199710141353.HAA06666@rocky.mt.sri.com> In-Reply-To: <199710140458.WAA09689@obie.softweyr.ml.org> References: <199710120351.WAA09609@pulsar.cs.wku.edu> <199710130146.TAA08173@obie.softweyr.ml.org> <199710131142.VAA17994@ogre.dtir.qld.gov.au> <199710140458.WAA09689@obie.softweyr.ml.org>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
>> You want your students to absorb some facts presumably through >> practical experimentation and not just theory. So, you should get >> the simplest device that shows some real world behaviour that they >> can play with, and usually > > I'll argue this point. Weber State received kudos from most of the > local employers of programmers for courses like their device drivers > series, where students get to develop drivers for, and crash and debug, > actual Sun and Digital systems. Writing a device driver for VMS is > *anything but* simple. I think you're both right. For a 'introduction' OS course, simpler is better. Too often students get lost in the details and miss understanding the big picture with 'real' code that has lots of hair. With stuff like minix, it's easier to understand the underlying concepts. But, it gets boring/limiting when you want to start doing something real with it and you run into certain limits (most notably the compiler limitations on minix), so you end up using a 'Real' OS for the advanced courses, such as dev. drivers. On a personal note, I started using minix, and then 'graduated' to bigger/better things. Bruce on the other hand decided to re-write minix originally, and had time to write a compiler at the same time. I guess FreeBSD must be a bit bigger with lots more hair in in that needs to be fixed since I haven't seen any new development tools out of him in a long time. :) :) ;) [ I Cc'd him on this, but he probably wants to be left out of further discussion. :) ] Nate
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?199710141353.HAA06666>