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Category Archives: Computer Science
Why Take a Compiler Course?
[Also see why take an OS course and why take an embedded systems course.] All good computer science departments offer a compilers course, but relatively few make it a required part of the undergraduate curriculum. This post answers the question: Why should you take this course, even if you never plan on writing a compiler? […]
Why Take an Operating Systems Course?
[Also see why take a compilers course and why take an embedded systems course.] The other day, while having coffee with a colleague, I mentioned that I’ll be teaching OS in the fall. His area is far from computer systems and he asked me what’s the point of this class? What are the students supposed […]
Compilers and Termination Revisited
My earlier post C compilers Disprove Fermat’s Last Theorem generated a good amount of discussion both here and on Reddit. Unfortunately, the discussion was riddled with misunderstandings. Some of this was because the topic is subtle, but some was my fault: the post was intended to be lightweight and I failed to explain the underlying […]
How to Get a Grant (from NSF, for Computer Scientists)
Learning to write good grant proposals is hard. First, while we learn to write papers in grad school, most of us only learn to write grants after completing a PhD, and possibly only after getting a faculty position. Second, the hit rates for grants are typically lower than for papers. Third, it’s fundamentally harder to […]
Predicting Grad School Performance
I enjoy going out drinking with my colleagues, although it only seems to happen a few times a year. It should come as a surprise to nobody that professors are natural bullshitters and people always have good stories: nearly destroying a ticket booth at Alta while doing avalanche control work, barely sub-nuclear pyrotechnic displays out […]
Can I Stop Lecturing Now?
In Fall 2010 I’ll teach my Advanced Embedded Systems course for the fifth time. This is a class that I enjoy teaching and that students generally enjoy taking. I created it from scratch and am fairly proud of it. There’s just one problem: I’m ready to stop giving the lectures. First, although I tweak and […]
C Compilers Disprove Fermat’s Last Theorem
[Update: I wrote another post on this topic that may explain the underlying issues more clearly.] Obviously I’m not serious: compilers are bad at solving high-level math problems and also there is good reason to believe this theorem cannot be disproved. But I’m getting ahead of myself. Recently — for reasons that do not matter […]
Margin in Software Systems
Margin of safety is a fundamental engineering concept where a system is built to tolerate loads exceeding the maximum expected load by some factor. For example, structural elements of buildings typically have a margin of safety of 100%: they can withstand twice the expected maximum load. Pressure vessels have more margin, in the range 250%-300%, […]
Picking a Research Topic in Computer Systems
This post is a collection of observations and advice for people who want to choose a research topic in computer systems. I’m not claiming to be some kind of genius in this area, but I have enough ideas that they seemed worth writing down. This advice is probably most useful for graduate students in CS, […]