Linked by Emmanuel Marty on Thu 2nd Sep 2004 07:36 UTC
As a programmer and manager of embedded software products for a living, I think that operating system programming is so much fun that it will eventually be outlawed. I've previously published two articles on OSNews, So, you want to write
an operating system and Climbing
the kernel mountain, and tried to summarize my experience in designing operating system kernels as well as technical traps that can be easily avoided.
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If you have plans for writing a full, workable OS that others will actually use, then I'd agree with the author. But I'm puttering around with my own OS -- http://www.karig.net/ -- and I really don't care if no one ever uses it. I'm writing this purely for my own enjoyment. I write code when I get inspired and post the results on the website. It's simply a hobby. And even if I never really have a complete system for anybody to download and use, I can see from the webstats that others are at least looking over my site. :-) The page on unreal mode has apparently proved useful to some people; somebody on Mega-Tokyo recommended that page to somebody else in response to a question.
I imagine that there are others who have thought that writing an OS would make an interesting and challenging hobby -- the kind of people (like me) who'd pay for a PDF on the innards of MMURTL (a real-time OS for the 386) and read it for fun. On the other hand, I occasionally see some breathless announcement somewhere that someone is in the pre-alpha stages of writing an OS that will (say) run Windows, Linux, and Mac software all on the same platform, or some such thing. You KNOW such people are going to be disappointed and give up.
That's my secret, I guess -- I keep my expectations low. :-) My little OS isn't going to revolutionize ANYTHING.