CST 334 - Week 2

Week 2 Summary: 

This week in CST 334, we dug into how operating systems handle processes, and honestly, things are starting to make more sense now. I’ve heard the term “context switching” before, but I never really got what it meant until we broke it down. Learning the difference between voluntary and involuntary switches like when a process is just waiting for input vs. when the OS forces it to stop, helped a lot. It’s kind of wild to think about how much the OS is doing behind the scenes just to keep everything running without us even noticing. 

We also got into how processes are created in C with fork(), exec(), and wait(). The fork() function really threw me off at first. I was like is the same program just running twice? But it made sense after printing out a bunch of values and looking at the return codes. It’s pretty cool how the parent and child processes end up doing different things, even though they start from the same place. Later in the week, we went over scheduling stuff like Round Robin and MLFQ. I didn’t think much of it at first, but I was surprised by how much the OS’s scheduling choices actually affect performance and how smooth everything feels when you’re using a system.

Learning about scheduling algorithms like Round Robin and MLFQ was one of the more interesting parts of the week. The lab really helped seeing how different scheduling setups can totally change how well the system runs made it feel more real. PA2 was looking like it was going to be a bit of a grind, but I did it after I kind of saw how everything connects: processes, context switching, scheduling, it’s all part of the same system. It finally feels like I’m building a clear picture of how the OS keeps things running, and I’m looking forward to learning more as we go.