First Day of OMSCS program

Today has been pretty eventful. I was finally granted access to the online learning platform (Udacity) and able to collaborate with other students (using Piazza platform) by posting messages on the forum for the course (Introduction to Operating Systems). On the forum, I introduced myself, sharing my name, what courses I’ve taken through OMSCS (none so far), hobbies, etc. In addition, I read a post on the forum that covered what plagiarism is; in fact, the professor of the course, along with a TA, will be presenting their research paper at an ACM conference coming up in February (or March).

With access to the course in Udacity, I spent my lunch huddled in the corner of the cafe on the 11th floor of my building, stuffing my face with a home cooked meal (thanks to my lovely wife) as a streamed the video lectures on my iPad while simulatenously taking notes (using Notability, the most amazing note taking iOS app ever).

In that hour, I was able to finish ²⁄₃ of the lectures from the first lesson, which covered the basics of operating systems:

• What an OS is
• What services an OS provides
• How policies and mechanisms differ from one another
• How privilege mode switches when a user program runs versus when the kernel runs
• Examples of system calls