Week 24

This week’s lessons focused on several basic concepts: the role of the operating system, computer architecture, the history of Linux and the shell, programming in C, and the command line. Together, these topics helped me connect the lower-level operations of hardware and software with how modern systems actually run. 

The idea that the operating system acts like an API between hardware and users made a lot of sense to me. It’s something I never really thought about before, but now I understand how it makes everything else possible. I also found the “cake” example from the lecture really helpful — it showed how operating systems divide up resources in a way that’s fair and efficient, not necessarily perfect. That made the whole concept of resource management more visual and easier to grasp.

The computer architecture review helped me remember how the CPU, RAM, and storage all communicate. The memory hierarchy stood out as something really important — the way we trade off between speed and size made me think about why caching exists and how performance is balanced in real systems.

The most challenging part for me was the introduction to C programming. While I’ve coded in Python and Java before, C feels very different because it provides such direct access to memory and hardware. Understanding pointers and memory management is still confusing, especially the difference between passing by value and passing by reference. However, I had an “aha” moment when I realized why C is still so dominant—it’s the backbone of all major operating systems. Seeing that connection made the learning curve feel worthwhile. 

Looking ahead, I’m curious to see how these concepts will connect to virtualization. It seems like everything we’re learning now—process management, memory allocation, and system calls—will serve as the foundation for understanding how multiple operating systems can share the same hardware efficiently. This week gave me a stronger sense of how the pieces of the computing world fit together, from transistors and buses to user-level commands.