Today I bought Mac OS X Internals by Amit Singh of kernelthread.com fame.
It’s a massive 1640 pages long book and Amit has been receiving rave reviews for its technical accuracy and readability.
The books covers all aspects of Mac OS X including:
- The history of Mac OS X
- The Mach microkernel
- The BSD, X, Carbon, Cocoa and Java application environments
- The PowerPC and Intel processors
- EFI
- System startup (launchd for instance)
- Process and memory management
- IPC
- The HFS+ file system
Wish me courage :-)
aadil says
1640 pages!!! You are sooo dead if you hope to use that book for reference. However, it does make a good dumb bell. ;)
avinash says
in fact, I’ll really try to read it (more or less) from cover to cover… I know I’ll refer to Mac OS X during my “Systems Software” class at the University of Mauritius and I don’t want to say something stupid to my students :-)
tarriq says
1640 pages!! wow
lecturers do pull up a lot of work for us
i’ve was in that class last year
its been rather inspiring!!! :)
avinash says
Exactly. Lecturers really spend a lot of time reading new things to have nice stories for avid students…
More seriously, it’s perhaps the most interesting part of being a lecturer (apart from doing the actual lecture which is fantastic if you are a born performer :-) ). Reading books and learning and trying new things is great. Coming up with new ideas is even greater.
Shane says
May I sit in one of your classes when I’m in Mauritius next? :D
avinash says
Why not? ;-)
tarriq says
There are only a handful of lecturers i know who are good “performers” and try to innovate ;)
we still lack a comon platform for discussions between lecturers and students
and also if there was a way in which students ( 5-6 students) could work together with lecturers on a specific project or conducting research would be really nice.. ;)
Shane says
tarriq: I think you get to do that if you splurge for a postgrad degree :D
avinash says
By the way, do not forget that the undergrad project is also a good opportunity to work “together” with your supervisor…
Olivier says
I’ve been in an undergrad “research” program, which was more like free labour for the university =)
Check it out: http://pyre.third-bit.com/2005-fall/uilib.pdf
My team mates and myself built an online-marking tool for profs, TA’s and students.
Avinash, maybe you could start an undergrad “project” course, whereby you’d supervise students building applications for internal use (or research, or privately funded projects, for startups for instance).
http://pyre.third-bit.com/past.html
It was a great experience for me before graduating to really understand what its like building software with a big enough scale. Also, in university, we build things the “right way” as opposed to “the way to make it work”. =)
avinash says
Hi Olivier,
Interesting idea to ponder… By coincidence, one external examiner from the UK told us more or less the same thing i.e. we should give students the opportunity to work on real-life systems before they actually join the work force.
We are thinking of setting up a kind of “Junior Entreprise”. I quote:
I’ll keep you informed.
LaSh says
You’ve been tagged. :)
[ Sorry I didn’t find any other appropriate space to let you know – see my blog if you wish to know the details ]
LaSh says
I remember leaving a comment here, but it didn’t seem to have been submitted. Anyway, just letting you know that I’ve tagged you on my blog, feel free to drop by for details ;)
avinash says
Hi LaSh,
I’ll only briefly mention 6 random things about myself but I won’t bother keeping the tag going (sorry…)
(1) I studied in Réunion Island for 2 years then moved to Lyon in France for a further 3 years,
(2) I was born in 1973 in Candos Hospital in Quatre-Bornes,
(3) The MacBook I’m using to type this is the first computer that I bought which has an Intel processor – all other computers I acquired had AMD processors…
(4) I am a massive fan of electronic music ranging from Kraftwerk (70’s) to Autechre (2000’s),
(5) I like good wine, especially French wine,
(6) I always wanted (and somewhat still want) to be a pilot.
Olivier says
Although the comments have now become unrelated to the subject matter, here’s an article I found interesting off reddit
http://philip.greenspun.com/teaching/undergrad-cs