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Xv6

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Re: Xv6

#21

Post by ars »

something123 wrote: post #5

If it's only for education purposes, why C? Wouldn't you want to choose a more "clear" language to get the ideas across?

> Wouldn't you want to choose a more "clear" language

Are you implying that another language would be more clear?

Quite the opposite, C doesn't hide anything from you. When you want to understand what the computer is doing you can tell directly from the C code. Unlike other languages where you need to understand what the language is doing first, and only then can you understand the computer.

There are time where "hiding" the computer is useful, but not here.

Re: Xv6

#24

Post by rcheu »

I took 828 and really enjoyed it. It was one of the best classes I took at MIT. The other OS for that class is JOS, which is the one you build through the labs. It's similarly simple to understand and not that long to build.

Re: Xv6

#25

Post by wfunction »

rcheu wrote: post #24

I took 828 and really enjoyed it. It was one of the best classes I took at MIT. The other OS for that class is JOS, which is the one you build through the labs. It's similarly simple to understand and not that long to build.

> I took 828 and really enjoyed it. It was one of the best classes I took at MIT. The other OS for that class is JOS, which is the one you build through the labs. It's similarly simple to understand and not that long to build.

I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take away from your comment aside from "I went to MIT".

Re: Xv6

#28

Post by stonemetal »

something123 wrote: post #5

If it's only for education purposes, why C? Wouldn't you want to choose a more "clear" language to get the ideas across?

What language did you have in mind? It has to be suitable for writing an OS, so Java, python and what not are out. The project has been around for more than a decade so the language has to have had a stable v1 release more than 10 years ago. Also the original code you are working with is in C so you will need to translate it. C seems like a perfectly reasonable choice.

Re: Xv6

#29

Post by cbd1984 »

ars wrote: post #21
something123 wrote: post #5

If it's only for education purposes, why C? Wouldn't you want to choose a more "clear" language to get the ideas across?

> Wouldn't you want to choose a more "clear" language Are you implying that another language would be more clear? Quite the opposite, C doesn't hide anything from you. When you want to understand what the computer is doing you can tell directly from the C code. Unlike other languages where you need to understand what the language is doing first, and only then can you understand the computer. There are time where "hid…

> C doesn't hide anything from you.

Yes, it does.

C hides cache, SIMD, registers, the stack (no multiple return values for you!), the details of the heap (malloc() either succeeds or fails, and you can't know what it's going to do until you call it), SMP, instruction-level parallelism, and the details of atomicity, all of which are relevant to OS programming.

C is a nice language. Don't pretend it's how the hardware really works.

Re: Xv6

#30

Post by zem »

wfunction wrote: post #25
rcheu wrote: post #24

I took 828 and really enjoyed it. It was one of the best classes I took at MIT. The other OS for that class is JOS, which is the one you build through the labs. It's similarly simple to understand and not that long to build.

> I took 828 and really enjoyed it. It was one of the best classes I took at MIT. The other OS for that class is JOS, which is the one you build through the labs. It's similarly simple to understand and not that long to build. I'm not sure what I'm supposed to take away from your comment aside from "I went to MIT".

that the course was really enjoyable. why is that not nice to know?

edit: here's an analogy - say the article was about a famous restaurant, and someone chimed in to say "i ate there when i was visiting hong kong, and it was one of the best meals i've ever had". now we already know that it's a good restaurant; that's what the article was all about after all. nevertheless, i like that sort of comment; it adds a human touch to the story because (rightly or wrongly) i perceive a fellow commenter as less remote than a newspaper food writer, and therefore their opinion has a certain anecdotal quality to it that the article lacks.

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