You probably had your bad power-seller experience when trying to buy consumer electronics from a Chinese or Hong Kong seller. Avoid those. They're trouble.
And Windows 95 and 98, which were touted as completely new operating systems when in fact they ran a graphical shell on top of DOS (with 32-bit DOS extender).
That's fair enough. I have respect for all achievements where a man has pushed himself beyond his former limits. I am myself struggling with my little programming project which many here would probably find easy:).
But seriously, designing and coding an OS is a very advanced task. You do need to learn a lot beforehand, before you can even dream about doing it. That's great if you really can do it, but the guy I met was simply a lazy guy who pretended he knew something when he clearly only ever had held a shaky grasp of the broad principles. It's that sort of attitude - which he held - which is very common, isn't helpful and doesn't contribute anything worthwhile.
It's a good point and not funny at all.
I spoke to a guy recently who told me he knew how to write a compiler... turns out he had done a one year's masters degree in IT over 2 decades ago. Needless to say, he couldn't tell me anything about the process of writing a compiler apart from that it involved parsing expressions, putting them through a shunting algorithm and checking syntax. I believe this is exactly the sort of 'informed' comment that will be attracted by a discussion about operating system design.
OS design, like writing compilers, is an EXPERT task. Knowing the broad principles of how it's done could never be enough. How could it?
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You probably had your bad power-seller experience when trying to buy consumer electronics from a Chinese or Hong Kong seller. Avoid those. They're trouble.
The Psion Organiser II came in 3 different versions. I have one still. It's made from metal and very, very hard plastic.. It's like a brick..
And Windows 95 and 98, which were touted as completely new operating systems when in fact they ran a graphical shell on top of DOS (with 32-bit DOS extender).
American English: r-e-a-l-i-z-e
Note that the letter 'a' is in both.
That's fair enough. I have respect for all achievements where a man has pushed himself beyond his former limits. I am myself struggling with my little programming project which many here would probably find easy :).
But seriously, designing and coding an OS is a very advanced task. You do need to learn a lot beforehand, before you can even dream about doing it. That's great if you really can do it, but the guy I met was simply a lazy guy who pretended he knew something when he clearly only ever had held a shaky grasp of the broad principles. It's that sort of attitude - which he held - which is very common, isn't helpful and doesn't contribute anything worthwhile.
It's a good point and not funny at all. I spoke to a guy recently who told me he knew how to write a compiler... turns out he had done a one year's masters degree in IT over 2 decades ago. Needless to say, he couldn't tell me anything about the process of writing a compiler apart from that it involved parsing expressions, putting them through a shunting algorithm and checking syntax. I believe this is exactly the sort of 'informed' comment that will be attracted by a discussion about operating system design. OS design, like writing compilers, is an EXPERT task. Knowing the broad principles of how it's done could never be enough. How could it?