Fundamentals of Operating Systems

Build efficient software by understanding how the OS kernel works

------

Operating systems (their kernel specifically) orchestrate many processes, allow access to memory, disk, network and execute processes by scheduling them to the CPU. Sounds simple when we put it this way but this task is vast. Writing efficient programs depends on how much understanding the engineer has in OS kernel.

------

When we access a 32 bit integer in memory or write 6 bytes to disk, the kernel and hardware work together through several steps and layers to handle those tasks, simple as may seem. Each step and layer may add unpredictable costs. As a result we as engineers are bound to write inefficient code as we grind across the grain of the kernel.

------

I built this course to demystify what I believe are the fundamentals operating systems to software engineers. By knowing how the kernel works, you will start writing software differently and naturally as you will start questioning what happens in each line you author.

------