6 ms·

Andrew S. Tanenbaum's FAQ

57 points by MatthiasP 12y ago

song 12y ago
I strongly recommend reading all of his books. They are very clear and non boring and the knowledge you get from understanding them is really the basics of what any programer should know I believe (well except maybe for the distributed systems book). After reading this faq, I'm very curious about the travel book.
- avinassh 12y ago
  I love his Operating Systems book [0] which explains OS Concepts using Minix code [0] - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0131429388 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0131429388
  - petilon 12y ago
    I recommend buying your computer books in India. US Price for this book is $150 USD. India price is around Rs. 427 which is around $7 USD. Textbook prices, like everything related to education and healthcare are excessively high in the US. A reasonable price would be around $50, which is what this book would cost if it wasn't a textbook. The same book in Amazon India: http://www.amazon.in/Operating-Systems-Implementation-Tanenbaum-Andrew/dp/8120329554/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1426602500&sr=8-4&keywords=tanenbaum http://www.amazon.in/Operating-Systems-Implementation-Tanenb... Update: Cheaper books bought in India may not be commercially exported out of India
    - SSLy 12y ago
      Yeah, do they ship to Europe?
      - carlesfe 12y ago
        Not to Spain, at least: "Sorry, this item can't be shipped to your selected address."
        lobo_tuerto 12y ago
        And not to México either... :(
      - switch007 12y ago
        I sourced it in the UK as an (IIRC) "International Edition"
    - j-b 12y ago
      I was eager to take your advice. Problem is it can't be shipped to the US.
      - have_humility 12y ago
        See LeonRobrotsky's suggestion with AbeBooks. Another suggestion is Barnes & Noble. (Yes, really.) I myself had borrowed a copy through interlibrary loan back in November after checking Amazon for <$50 dollar copies, only to be blown away that they were more like $160-$190. If you've used ILL, though, you probably know how tedious it can be. A couple of weeks ago, I had to kill some time, so I meandered into a Barnes & Noble for the first time in years and on a whim tried to look up Operating Systems: Design and Implementation on bn.com. Turns out, bn.com operates not just to sell B&N wares, but also apparently as a sort of hub for third-party sellers, (just?) like Amazon. I was surprised to see the market rate for used copies was $34.50, so I snagged one. Meanwhile, the AbeBooks link above has a shrink-wrapped copy for $16.52. Takeaway: don't assume that Amazon is the end-all-be-all, even for books.
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
      - zerocrates 12y ago
        After Kirtsaeng [1], I don't think so... (at least as far as US law is concerned) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirtsaeng_v._John_Wiley_%26_Sons,_Inc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirtsaeng_v._John_Wiley_%26_Son....
    - LeonRobrotsky 12y ago
      Just look on AbeBooks: http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=9788120329553 http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=978812032...
      - a3n 12y ago
        Irony of ironies: if you look at the bottom of Amazon's front page, you'll see they own Abe.
  - ptaipale 12y ago
    BTW how different is the 3rd edition from the 1st? I had it for my OS course (along with the Silberschatz book), but it was >25 years ago. Still have the Minix disks somewhere, I think. It was awesome to get a # prompt on a 8086, but in the end, what mattered was to have GNU utils, gcc, emacs and X11 on a 386, which meant Linux.
    - maaku 12y ago
      Completely different. MINIX was 100% overhauled.
- maaku 12y ago
  Loved the distributed systems book. It is just sad that field has not left academia yet. We should be in a world where every programmer should know the contents of that book, instead of reinventing the wheel as we are doing now.
- ssebastianj 12y ago
  Right at this moment I'm reading Computer Networks (4th Edition) and loving it! I enjoy his writing style, mainly because he makes jokes all the time! Funny guy :)
micheljansen 12y ago
> Will somebody please explain to me why 'ezel' (donkey) is masculine, 'paard' (horse) is neuter and 'antilope' (antelope) is feminine? Don't worry, Dutch people don't know this either. Unfortunately that means for each word you'll have to learn whether it's a "de" or a "het" word. Something that slowly happens over time as your vocabulary expands. This is one of the main reasons why Dutch has a reputation of being difficult to master.
- xiaq 12y ago
  You must be joking about Dutch being difficult to master. Dutch grammar is in every aspect simpler than German. The orthography is a bit awkward though. Also, it is weird that Tannenbaum makes a difference between masculine and feminine at all, since in standard Netherlandic Dutch they have since long ago merged into the common gender ("de" word). I guess he just got that knowledge from some old grammar book...
  - danieldk 12y ago
    Also, it is weird that Tannenbaum makes a difference between masculine and feminine at all, since in standard Netherlandic Dutch they have since long ago merged into the common gender ("de" word). Yes, but it is still relevant for pronouns: Dit is een ezel, [hij/zij/het] staat in de wei. Whether most speakers actually know the correct gender and thus pronoun is another question ;).
    - gpvos 12y ago
      Actually, in modern Dutch the actual sex of the animal determines the gender to use, not the grammatical gender. If unknown, use the male form. (This may be different in Flanders.) The difference between "het" and "de" is actually also eroding at the moment.
      - danieldk 12y ago
        Actually, in modern Dutch the actual sex of the animal determines the gender to use, not the grammatical gender. If unknown, use the male form. (This may be different in Flanders.) ...if you know the sex of the animal. Also see here (the 'Toelichting'): http://taaladvies.net/taal/advies/vraag/1631/zijn_haar_de_muis_heeft_staart_bezeerd/ http://taaladvies.net/taal/advies/vraag/1631/zijn_haar_de_mu... Of course, these annoyances only exist because the distinction is going away, but hasn't gone completely.
profil 12y ago
> It was so strange to be in an environment with people having I.Q.'s below 150 and where it wasn't necessary to study 12, 13, 14 hours a day, seven days a week just to keep up. Is this true? Seems crazy, how do you stand doing this for ~5 years?
- willjack 12y ago
  Slight exaggeration on the IQ, less so on the amount of work. Source: 2nd year undergrad sitting in MIT lecture now, running on 3 hours of sleep.
  - levosmetalo 12y ago
    > Source: 2nd year undergrad sitting in MIT lecture now, running on 3 hours of sleep. Sorry to interrupt you, but if you are reading HN while sitting on your lectures, why not just go home and get some sleep?
    - andrewflnr 12y ago
      Sometimes the only reason you go to lecture is to be sure to catch important announcements. You can to that with little sleep, and in the meantime, you need something low-effort to keep you awake. So there's one theory.
      - levosmetalo 12y ago
        Or you can buy a beer once a week to someone that will send you "important announcements" by email, and having a good solid sleep in own bed ;)
    - Dewie 12y ago
      Because Mr. Brainiac isn't skilled at managing his time.
Koekoeksklok 12y ago
Mr. Tanenbaum has retired from the Vrije Universiteit recently, see here: http://www.few.vu.nl/~ast/afscheid http://www.few.vu.nl/~ast/afscheid
simonebrunozzi 12y ago
I met Prof. Tanenbaum in 2008, when I pitched AWS (Amazon Web Services) to the university staff. (I was Tech Evangelist for AWS in EMEA at the time). I only knew about him because of his "fights" with Linus Torvalds, and because I've studied on a couple of his books (which I found excellent). Meeting him was a big surprise: extremely funny, friendly, provocative, very smart, and in general someone you could instantly like. I loved when he would think about something and just close one eye, raise the other one to the ceiling, and make one of the funniest faces ever. I felt so happy afterwards, for the honor of meeting him, and for the joy that derived from that attitude of his. I wish every professor was as enjoyable (and competent) as him.
arca_vorago 12y ago
I have listened to as many of his lectures as I can find, and I am very interested in the work he is doing on Minix 3. 10k lines of code in the kernel makes for an easily approachable learning environment in my opinion.
nkantar 12y ago
> I spent a lot of time working for the Sierra Club and lobbying in Sacramento for a bill to protect San Francisco Bay from developers. I imagine he meant a different kind of developers than those who are taking (or have taken) over the area.
pluma 12y ago
Q: What inspired you to produce a personal FAQ? A: See Computer Networks, 3rd edition, page 663. Did you just tell me to go fuck myself? I believe I did, Bob. I believe I did.

57 points by MatthiasP 12y ago

song 12y ago

I strongly recommend reading all of his books. They are very clear and non boring and the knowledge you get from understanding them is really the basics of what any programer should know I believe (well except maybe for the distributed systems book). After reading this faq, I'm very curious about the travel book.

avinassh 12y ago
I love his Operating Systems book [0] which explains OS Concepts using Minix code [0] - http://www.amazon.com/dp/0131429388 http://www.amazon.com/dp/0131429388
- petilon 12y ago
  I recommend buying your computer books in India. US Price for this book is $150 USD. India price is around Rs. 427 which is around $7 USD. Textbook prices, like everything related to education and healthcare are excessively high in the US. A reasonable price would be around $50, which is what this book would cost if it wasn't a textbook. The same book in Amazon India: http://www.amazon.in/Operating-Systems-Implementation-Tanenbaum-Andrew/dp/8120329554/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1426602500&sr=8-4&keywords=tanenbaum http://www.amazon.in/Operating-Systems-Implementation-Tanenb... Update: Cheaper books bought in India may not be commercially exported out of India
  - SSLy 12y ago
    Yeah, do they ship to Europe?
    - carlesfe 12y ago
      Not to Spain, at least: "Sorry, this item can't be shipped to your selected address."
      - lobo_tuerto 12y ago
        And not to México either... :(
    - switch007 12y ago
      I sourced it in the UK as an (IIRC) "International Edition"
  - j-b 12y ago
    I was eager to take your advice. Problem is it can't be shipped to the US.
    - have_humility 12y ago
      See LeonRobrotsky's suggestion with AbeBooks. Another suggestion is Barnes & Noble. (Yes, really.) I myself had borrowed a copy through interlibrary loan back in November after checking Amazon for <$50 dollar copies, only to be blown away that they were more like $160-$190. If you've used ILL, though, you probably know how tedious it can be. A couple of weeks ago, I had to kill some time, so I meandered into a Barnes & Noble for the first time in years and on a whim tried to look up Operating Systems: Design and Implementation on bn.com. Turns out, bn.com operates not just to sell B&N wares, but also apparently as a sort of hub for third-party sellers, (just?) like Amazon. I was surprised to see the market rate for used copies was $34.50, so I snagged one. Meanwhile, the AbeBooks link above has a shrink-wrapped copy for $16.52. Takeaway: don't assume that Amazon is the end-all-be-all, even for books.
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
    - zerocrates 12y ago
      After Kirtsaeng [1], I don't think so... (at least as far as US law is concerned) [1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirtsaeng_v._John_Wiley_%26_Sons,_Inc http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirtsaeng_v._John_Wiley_%26_Son....
  - LeonRobrotsky 12y ago
    Just look on AbeBooks: http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=9788120329553 http://www.abebooks.com/servlet/SearchResults?isbn=978812032...
    - a3n 12y ago
      Irony of ironies: if you look at the bottom of Amazon's front page, you'll see they own Abe.
- ptaipale 12y ago
  BTW how different is the 3rd edition from the 1st? I had it for my OS course (along with the Silberschatz book), but it was >25 years ago. Still have the Minix disks somewhere, I think. It was awesome to get a # prompt on a 8086, but in the end, what mattered was to have GNU utils, gcc, emacs and X11 on a 386, which meant Linux.
  - maaku 12y ago
    Completely different. MINIX was 100% overhauled.
maaku 12y ago
Loved the distributed systems book. It is just sad that field has not left academia yet. We should be in a world where every programmer should know the contents of that book, instead of reinventing the wheel as we are doing now.
ssebastianj 12y ago
Right at this moment I'm reading Computer Networks (4th Edition) and loving it! I enjoy his writing style, mainly because he makes jokes all the time! Funny guy :)

micheljansen 12y ago

> Will somebody please explain to me why 'ezel' (donkey) is masculine, 'paard' (horse) is neuter and 'antilope' (antelope) is feminine? Don't worry, Dutch people don't know this either. Unfortunately that means for each word you'll have to learn whether it's a "de" or a "het" word. Something that slowly happens over time as your vocabulary expands. This is one of the main reasons why Dutch has a reputation of being difficult to master.

xiaq 12y ago
You must be joking about Dutch being difficult to master. Dutch grammar is in every aspect simpler than German. The orthography is a bit awkward though. Also, it is weird that Tannenbaum makes a difference between masculine and feminine at all, since in standard Netherlandic Dutch they have since long ago merged into the common gender ("de" word). I guess he just got that knowledge from some old grammar book...
- danieldk 12y ago
  Also, it is weird that Tannenbaum makes a difference between masculine and feminine at all, since in standard Netherlandic Dutch they have since long ago merged into the common gender ("de" word). Yes, but it is still relevant for pronouns: Dit is een ezel, [hij/zij/het] staat in de wei. Whether most speakers actually know the correct gender and thus pronoun is another question ;).
  - gpvos 12y ago
    Actually, in modern Dutch the actual sex of the animal determines the gender to use, not the grammatical gender. If unknown, use the male form. (This may be different in Flanders.) The difference between "het" and "de" is actually also eroding at the moment.
    - danieldk 12y ago
      Actually, in modern Dutch the actual sex of the animal determines the gender to use, not the grammatical gender. If unknown, use the male form. (This may be different in Flanders.) ...if you know the sex of the animal. Also see here (the 'Toelichting'): http://taaladvies.net/taal/advies/vraag/1631/zijn_haar_de_muis_heeft_staart_bezeerd/ http://taaladvies.net/taal/advies/vraag/1631/zijn_haar_de_mu... Of course, these annoyances only exist because the distinction is going away, but hasn't gone completely.

profil 12y ago

> It was so strange to be in an environment with people having I.Q.'s below 150 and where it wasn't necessary to study 12, 13, 14 hours a day, seven days a week just to keep up. Is this true? Seems crazy, how do you stand doing this for ~5 years?

willjack 12y ago
Slight exaggeration on the IQ, less so on the amount of work. Source: 2nd year undergrad sitting in MIT lecture now, running on 3 hours of sleep.
- levosmetalo 12y ago
  > Source: 2nd year undergrad sitting in MIT lecture now, running on 3 hours of sleep. Sorry to interrupt you, but if you are reading HN while sitting on your lectures, why not just go home and get some sleep?
  - andrewflnr 12y ago
    Sometimes the only reason you go to lecture is to be sure to catch important announcements. You can to that with little sleep, and in the meantime, you need something low-effort to keep you awake. So there's one theory.
    - levosmetalo 12y ago
      Or you can buy a beer once a week to someone that will send you "important announcements" by email, and having a good solid sleep in own bed ;)
  - Dewie 12y ago
    Because Mr. Brainiac isn't skilled at managing his time.

Koekoeksklok 12y ago

Mr. Tanenbaum has retired from the Vrije Universiteit recently, see here: http://www.few.vu.nl/~ast/afscheid http://www.few.vu.nl/~ast/afscheid

simonebrunozzi 12y ago

I met Prof. Tanenbaum in 2008, when I pitched AWS (Amazon Web Services) to the university staff. (I was Tech Evangelist for AWS in EMEA at the time). I only knew about him because of his "fights" with Linus Torvalds, and because I've studied on a couple of his books (which I found excellent). Meeting him was a big surprise: extremely funny, friendly, provocative, very smart, and in general someone you could instantly like. I loved when he would think about something and just close one eye, raise the other one to the ceiling, and make one of the funniest faces ever. I felt so happy afterwards, for the honor of meeting him, and for the joy that derived from that attitude of his. I wish every professor was as enjoyable (and competent) as him.

arca_vorago 12y ago

I have listened to as many of his lectures as I can find, and I am very interested in the work he is doing on Minix 3. 10k lines of code in the kernel makes for an easily approachable learning environment in my opinion.

nkantar 12y ago

> I spent a lot of time working for the Sierra Club and lobbying in Sacramento for a bill to protect San Francisco Bay from developers. I imagine he meant a different kind of developers than those who are taking (or have taken) over the area.

pluma 12y ago

Q: What inspired you to produce a personal FAQ? A: See Computer Networks, 3rd edition, page 663. Did you just tell me to go fuck myself? I believe I did, Bob. I believe I did.