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I'm also teaching an OS class, and IMHO using some new shiny thing is not the right way to approach it, because the students will be put in an ideal imaginary w
by vseloved 13y ago
I'm also teaching an OS class, and IMHO using some new shiny thing is not the right way to approach it, because the students will be put in an ideal imaginary world, and neither will face the real-world practice, nor understand how it all came to be the way it is now. I think, it may be a good follow-up course (like "System Programming in Rust") after the "normal" C-based course.
I also don't agree with the notion that other option is "to teach students to write C code riddled with security vulnerabilities, memory leaks, and race conditions". This is exactly what such kind of course should teach them not to do, clearly pointing these problems and explaining how to deal with them. But not having exposure to that in the learning environment will only make them repeat these mistakes in the real world.
Btw, I'm a Lisp programmer and not a C fan.
- pjmlp 13y agoIt is however a very good idea to teach them that C is not the only way to write operating systems and it is currently on this position, because of a few historical accidents. Which we pay every day with extra tooling to cover for the language deficiencies on the area of security.