Ideas for a book

[shikhin]

Hi,

Since whenever I became a little more experienced in OS Dev (not that I am much experienced now, but I guess I've improved), I've been toying with the idea of writing a lengthy tutorial to get someone started well in OS Dev. However, my idea wasn't to write something which was standalone - one could pick it up, and write a OS in a week. My idea was to write something which taught how to make important design decisions - such as Own bootloader vs GRUB, and benefits of both. Then, I'd branch off to: A one-stage bootloader vs a multi-stage bootloader or something; and a Intermediate Loader after GRUB vs simply the kernel and so on and so forth. Similarly, for the kernel, I could do Microkernel vs Monolithic and the benefits and such.

Of course, the above would be a very very thick book, and would be time consuming. What I was thinking was to base it on my OS - so, I describe the other alternative briefly, and then dive into the alternative I choose. Currently, I do maintain a small notebook, in which I keep my ideas and stuff. I draw flowcharts to think about algorithms and write about decisions I made that day. Similarly, I could maintain another notebook which would be this "book", in which I'd add major designs each day.

tl;dr I'm thinking of writing a book on OS Dev - more of a long tutorial on DESIGNING a OS, and not WRITING one. What do you think about the idea?

Regards,
Shikhin

[shikhin]

Hi,

Send this idea to Tanenbaum.

I'm not too sure how to interpret that: good idea, bad idea or already done (OSDI perhaps - but I think mine would be a lot different)?

[AndrewBuckley]

five seconds of google.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_S._Tanenbaum#Books

[Love4Boobies]

I think there's lots of good material out there already. However, if you feel you need to contribute to the community, you should instead give the wiki some more lovin'; it makes more sense to improve what we already have than to create many sources that all cover the same basic things.

But I do see one good thing that could come out of your teaching effors: You'd be answering some of the questions you should've thought of but never have---it happens to me all the time when I'm trying to explain difficult subjects to other people, not necessarily related to computers.

[shikhin]

Hi,

I think there's lots of good material out there already. However, if you feel you need to contribute to the community, you should instead give the wiki some more lovin'; it makes more sense to improve what we already have than to create many sources that all cover the same basic things.

Yeah, I suppose some.

But I do see one good thing that could come out of your teaching effors: You'd be answering some of the questions you should've thought of but never have---it happens to me all the time when I'm trying to explain difficult subjects to other people, not necessarily related to computers.

Happens to me too, on the IRC channel. Thanks, anyway. I'm that sort of a guy which has several hundreds of thousands of ideas each day, and gets diverted a lot. Hard to focus on anything for a long time, but this OS Dev project has been keeping me interested since last year (though I still do get diverted for weeks in between). I'm not too sure if everybody has that problem, or I'm the only one..

Regards,
Shikhin

[Love4Boobies]

I'm that sort of a guy which has several hundreds of thousands of ideas each day, and gets diverted a lot. Hard to focus on anything for a long time, but this OS Dev project has been keeping me interested since last year (though I still do get diverted for weeks in between). I'm not too sure if everybody has that problem, or I'm the only one..

Sounds like a mild case of ADD to me...

[shikhin]

Hi,

Same here, big ADD fan.

So there's someone like me! Cool!

I found it essential to just ignore ideas I couldn't implement (which means 99,99% of them) and focus on something I'm doing right now. Seems to work most of the time.

I find that essential too. But you see, I'm too inexperienced. I got too much to learn, and so, daily, I get so many ideas which I CAN implement, and so, I get temptations.. Hmm. Any ideas to fix this bug?

Regards,
Shikhin