David Oakes Learning Journal

 Halfway through the class already. Not sure what to make of it, beyond that it's all progress. Much of this weeks work was on memory management, with a lot of emphasis on the paging process. I didn't expect to catch on quite so quick this week but here we are. I've put off any sort of serious work until Thursday. Because tomorrow is April 1st. April Fool's day. The day I can't get anything serious done. Anyhow onto the weekly framework for the class. I've mentioned it before, but I'll mention it again: I like the framework that Sam's given us for the weekly journal. This week was a continuation of the memory management techniques learned last week. The topics included: Free Space management - Or "How to Keep the Free Spaces in Memory From Becoming Too Small to Use". It happens more often with segmentation than paging, but external fragmentation is a problem that occurs when the spaces between reserved spaces get too small for anything useful t...

The OS work is continuing at steady pace now. This week's work wasn't as much of a headache as I thought that it would be. Going forward, there is now the additional task of a group project. In which, we are to read a foundational systems paper, and produce a summary, video presentation, and a personal reflection on it. I've opted to go it alone, if only to try and break a procrastination issue I've had for years.  As for the Week's work, we covered: Address Spaces - Blocks of memory set aside by an OS for programs to work in. They're usually composed of a three segments: The program code, the heap, and the stack. The Heap contains dynamic data structures and any data storage requested via the malloc() method. The stack contains local variables, arguments for routines, return values, etc. OSs have three goals when virtualizing memory: transparency, which actually means the program doesn't realize its memory is virtual, efficiency, in terms of time and space,...

 So this is the week I did adjust all the week numbers on the posts. Still feel like I'm missing numbers but I'm not in position to fret about it at the moment. Sam has setup the framework that I used for last weeks post to be used every week for his course's duration. Honestly, no complaints here. In my posts for the Intro to Database Systems course, I had mentioned not having very much to write about in these posts, so Sam having this framework in place is definitely making it easier. The subjects we covered this week were: Processes, the fundamental abstraction of the OS. Running programs, simply put, and all the components of them, how memory is allocated, the states they can be in, and so on. The core focus of the OS' operations. The Process API. How to create and control processes through the bash shell and C language. New processes can be created by the fork() or exec() commands depending on whether you're copying an already running process or running a new p...

 I know I've skipped a number, but I've learned I've had two posts both labeled 'Week 11'. I should have that sorted by next week. As for the Operating Systems course: It's only the first week of it, and I've already experienced assignments completely disintegrating as I try to complete them. Sam, our instructor for this course, has provided a prompt explicitly for the journal entries. So I do appreciate that much. He's provided the following points and asks we treat them as steps. Identify the topics we covered in class -- you can start by listing them Explain what each of the topics were in your own terms -- take the identified topics and add a sentence or two describing them Identify least-understood topics -- of these topics, which was the hardest for you to write the descriptions? Explain the nature of your confusion -- for these difficult topics, what pieces of them make sense and what pieces are difficult to describe? Identify "aha" mome...

Another bi-weekly post. Or at least, it is by official declaration. The final eighth week of each class in the program is only half length. Which is somewhat confusing to say at least. By my count, this is covering the 21st and 22nd weeks, which is making me think I've missed a post or two somewhere in the program. In any case, despite how well things have gone for me thus far in the program, I find myself having lengthy moments of what I can only describe as "overextension of perception of the surrounding world." At one point I would've been able to write them off as mere anomalies. Unusual spates of activity from my, frankly, overactive imagination. Little nightmares, more often impossible, of futures bearing fruitlessness or failure. I know that this sort of thing isn't healthy. That expecting the worst means expecting to not be disappointed. But that's why I find it often helps. After a certain point, one learns that its way more fun to be surprised than i...

 So, here we are with another bi-weekly post. I did have that quick message with the instructor about maybe branching out in regards to topics here on the learning journal. And, to be frank, I'm still not sure what I was expecting out of it, if anything. According to the instructor, it was designed around the learning science. He did recommend that I at least try to maintain weekly posts, even if it did amount to short recollections of the mundanity of the learning process.  Still, the seeming mundanity of the course as it is, isn't all bad. I'm finding even mildly novel experiences to be rather exciting. It might not seem like much but this weeks Python code work had a novelty in one of the test files. I'm so used to seeing near instantaneous responses out of these, the fact it took nearly a minute and a half to complete had me thinking I'd somehow managed to deadlock it. Another novelty, The answer being simple and straightforward. I'm so used to answers needi...

 In all honesty, I would've posted something last week, but I just didn't very much to post about. The most interesting thing that's happened, school-wise, is the fact I had my first proctored exam on the 31st. Don't get me wrong, I'm confident in how it turned out, and it was a pleasing twist on the usual online/Canvas test taking. The issues is that that's really the only thing that I have to write about that's related to school. This is why I don't see myself as a blogging sort of person, I always run out of things to say. Yes, there are other things going on in life and the world but I'm not sure if any of it fits the limitations here. These supposed-to-be-weekly writings are meant to be a learning journal throughout the program I'm in, and some of what I have to talk about is much more likely to come across as me ranting about something unrelated to my learning experiences. So, as much as I wish I could pen more about how things are going he...