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by spiffyk 558 days ago
Very cool! How much time do you dedicate to this, in terms of hours per week? Looks like a lot of work has gone into it!

You say you're a student on your profile - does that mean university? If so, have you also worked on the OS directly as part of your studies?

1 comments

Yeah I am a student at an university. I have managed to "skip" some courses like operating systems and concurrency just by showing my project to the professor. Otherwise my project is not integrated to my studies in any way. I also got a part time job in my university's embedded side because of my project.

How much time I put to this really depends on what else is happening in my life at the moment. There has been months where I've put total of 5 hours into this and some weeks alone I may reach close to 40 hours.

No doubt you've learned a hell of a lot from this.

I would imagine this will set you up incredibly well for a career in the industry, arguably moreso than your actual degree. Any reasonable prospective potential hirer is gonna be super impressed by it I think.

> I would imagine this will set you up incredibly well for a career in the industry, arguably moreso than your actual degree.

That's what I hope at least. This is something I would want to do for my career in the future. Good portfolio never hurts :)

>×I have managed to "skip" some courses like operating systems and concurrency just by showing my project to the professor.

Love this! Well done. Best way to skip classes ever!

Awesome, thanks!

One more set of questions: was there something you would call an "it's alive!" moment in the beginning of the project? A part where it would start to get _really_ fun for you? If so, what was it and how long did it take you to get there?

There has been multiple really great moments during the development. Its always cool to see some completely new features working on real hardware, like first time getting keyboard input, USB mouse input, running DOOM, reading from disks, networking, and getting a compiler working!

I think it became actually fun after I got all the basic requirements done and could start deviating from more or less standard OS code. When I could actually decide what I want to work on. Maybe after couple of months it was in that state. It was also fun at the beginning. it was just way harder as I didn't have any prior knowledge and I was trying to wrap my head around some basic concepts :D

> first time getting keyboard input, USB mouse input, running DOOM, reading from disks, networking, and getting a compiler working

One of these is really a lot more impressive (and indicates a far more mature and finished product) than the rest. I love how it's just listed in there next to the basics. Nice job.

Joining these courses may be enriching for everyone though. You may learn something new or a different approach to a problem you've solved. Other students will appreciate your actual experience with the subject. And the professor may learn a thing or two (and appreciate your contributions) if you can add to the subject. That said, I'm not good managing my time and I don't have the guts to code an OS from scratch, so what do I know?