Book of the Week: Just For Fun
17 May 2015
Just for Fun is the origin story of Linux. I like technology origin stories, because they have entertaining characters and I know the ending already. Linux started out as a pet project to read email with a dial up modem as a way for Linus to learn about the 386 processor. It now runs most websites on the internet. It is best to start out and do one thing well and grow organically from there. Meaning of Life The origin story is sandwiched between two chapters on the meaning of life, which appear in the beginning and end of the book. The meaning of life is:
- Survival
- Social Order
- Entertainment
in that order. In the early days we lived to survive (sex for reproduction). Then social order develops (marriage). Then what’s left is entertainment (more sex). There is nothing after entertainment. Many things besides sex go through these stages. Operating Systems Flame Wars Linus had a flame war with the author of Modern Operating Systems, the book he used to learn about operating systems. I got curious about learning about operating systems after I read that. I remember operating systems being a hard and time consuming course in school. Here are some online classes for operating systems.
- Stanford CS140: Operating Systems
- Udacity: Advanced Operating Systems
- Harvard CS161: Operating Systems
- Berkeley CS162: Operating Systems and Systems Programming
Time to do something, just for fun.