3 ms·

Wow that’s a lot of work. What motivates these projects? Just the cool factor?

• manwar 9y ago
  Learning how things work under the hood is also an important factor, but mainly for cool factor, yes :"D
  • ianai 9y ago
    At last I knew, my alma mater had every CS major write a compiler in one class and an OS in another. It’s a very good aymto round out the degree.
    • pjmlp 9y ago
      Any CS degree worthwhile taking should have such projects.
• omeid2 9y ago
  "Hobbyist Operating System, just for the heck of it". Some people really get a good kick out of doing hard things for the heck of it. I did a fair share of it in my day, it is good fun. :)
• newnewpdro 9y ago
  Practicing your craft? Honing your skills? Keeping sharp? Exploring domains you can't necessarily get support to work on at the day job? Something to feature on your resume and demonstrate/discuss in your next interview?
  • jon-wood 9y ago
    All of the above in my case. I realised a while back that I’m missing some fundamentals due to having come into the industry via being self taught. To deal with that I’m currently working through NAND to Tetris, to get a grounding in how CPUs, compilers, and VMs work. After that I’ll probably find a good book on algorithms to work through, and then maybe (if I’m feeling adventurous) attempt an OS myself.
• pmarin 9y ago
  It's make me sad to read this kind of questions in "Hacker" News.
  • xupybd 9y ago
    It’s not a disparagement, just genuine curiosity.