Description:

In a nutshell, what you are reading is intended to be a shop class for computer science.
Young computer science students are taught to "drive" the computer; but where do
you go to learn what is under the hood? Trying to understand the operating system is
unfortunately not as easy as just opening the bonnet. The current Linux kernel runs into
the millions of lines of code, add to that the other critical parts of a modern operating
system (the compiler, assembler and system libraries) and your code base becomes
unimaginable. Further still, add a University level operating systems course (or four),
some good reference manuals, two or three years of C experience and, just maybe, you
might be able to figure out where to start looking to make sense of it all.
To keep with the car analogy, the prospective student is starting out trying to work on
a Formula One engine without ever knowing how a two stroke motor operates. During
their shop class the student should pull apart, twist, turn and put back together that two
stroke motor, and consequentially have a pretty good framework for understanding just
how the Formula One engine works. Nobody will expect them to be a Formula One
engineer, but they are well on their way!