Week 1 of Introduction to Operating Systems

Today is day 6 of OMSCS (Online Masters of Computer Science) and I want to quickly jot down some thoughts about the program as well as what I’ve learned so far.

I love the fact that I’m collaborating with other people. For the past couple years, I’ve taken undergraduate computer science courses (e.g. discrete mathematics, computer organization, data structures, linear algebra) from two seperate universities: university of north dakota and university of northern iowa.

At these two universities, I acquired a ton of knowledge that’s prepared me for this operating system course. However, in retrospect, I never felt a sense of community, only every exchanging e-mails with the professors. Never once did I get to interact with another student. Not one. This is diametrically opposed to the overall vibe in the OMSCS program (at least for the Operating Systems course).

In OMSCS, there’s a plethora a communication channels. From Piazza, a platform used to post messages in a forum, to Slack, where you can instant message students.

And this suits my life style. I can independently study and read papers and write code and when I want to chat with others, I launch the Slack app and talk.

In short, I’m loving the program so far.