CST334 - Week 3 Reflection

  Week 3 Learning Reflection

CST334 is taking the trophy as the densest and most knowledge-packed CSUMB CS Online course in the journey so far. That isn't to say I haven't felt inundated with new knowledge for every programming class already completed, but this one involves far more moving pieces than previous courses. This week covered a broad range of system concepts, programming approaches, binary-hex-decimal-bit math, and further gazing into the eye of computer architecture's magical madness--which I shall attempt to briefly all recall and recount here. 

   Starting with concepts covered, this week was big on memory management whether that was base and bounds address translation, garbage collection, common mistakes when allocating and subsequently freeing memory, fragmentation, segmentation of code/heap/stack to conserve memory, different algorithms for freeing/allocating memory such as best fit/worst fit/first fit, how the MMU/hardware factors into memory management, as well as many others. Suffice it to say, this is a class that requires sturdy reading/studying habits. The big takeaway is that an OS programmer working in C is drastically responsible for best memory management practice at every turn and must be their own garbage collector in lieu of working in a language like Java--this could mean anything from ensuring the virtual address is not exceeding the bounds of the physical address to keeping in mind that local variables are held in the stack and malloc() is working in the heap just in one simple line of code. Programming for this class has also turned up a notch as this programmer--who has not clocked nearly enough time with pointers--has been wrestling with writing his own memory management library with PA3. I have it to about 90% completed currently and will be revisiting upon completing the workday today. I find myself wanting to know more and wanting to know what I already know better at every turn of this class so I shall continue to dig my heels in. 

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