TESC Operating Systems vs Computer Architecture

[sodaspeak]

Hello,

I am considering taking COS-352 Operating Systems as one of my final computer science courses at Thomas Edison. TESC says it is "highly recommended" that students have completed COS-330 Computer Architecture before taking Operating Systems "or have experience with C or UNIX". I've done well in my programming courses (including Assembly Language) and I am very familiar with Unix, but it's not really clear if that puts me in a good position for this course or not. Any advice or experiences anyone can share about these two courses?

Thanks!

[benjenkinsv95]

The Computer Architecture course will teach you:
- How variables and numbers get stored inside of memory, and ways to ensure the data being stored doesn't become corrupt.
- Boolean Algebra, converting numbers from base 10 to binary, and then how to perform arithmetic operations on your binary numbers, it also teaches you about computer circuits (I assume most of this you should remember if you took discrete math)
- How a simple computer works and how to interact with it using MARIE (an Assembly language, just not Microsoft Assembler)
- It will discuss Input/Output, most importantly the idea of polling a specific piece of code asking "Hey have you finished yet?" over and over until it is ready as opposed to just waiting for that piece of code to notify you when it is done. That is the concept of Interrupt-Driven I/O.

Those are the main things that computer architecture covers. I ASSUME that the Operating Systems class wants you to have knowledge of Interrupt Driven I/O (worth googling) but honestly, having never taken the Operating Systems class that is just a guess.

Honestly if they are okay with just having C/UNIX experience they may just be expecting you to be somewhat familiar with the idea of multi-threading whether you can code it or not, but yet again, i'm just guessing. You may try just emailing a teacher if you cannot get any extra information off of this thread about the Operating Systems class.

For the record, if you like math classes, Computer Architecture was actually a pretty fun class to take, a tad bit time consuming (6-10 hours a week of homework/studying), but kind of fun. If you have any more questions on the Computer Architecture class feel free to ask.

[JTP]

Saylor has both of those classes available through their Brandman University partnership. I'm sure its not identical to TESC's class, but you could probably look through some of the coursework, reading, and assignments to see how challenging you think it will be.

[sodaspeak]

Saylor has both of those classes available through their Brandman University partnership. I'm sure its not identical to TESC's class, but you could probably look through some of the coursework, reading, and assignments to see how challenging you think it will be.

Thanks for the advice! I will look at the Saylor courses and maybe see if I can get the textbook cheapl

[sodaspeak]

The Computer Architecture course will teach you:
- How variables and numbers get stored inside of memory, and ways to ensure the data being stored doesn't become corrupt.
- Boolean Algebra, converting numbers from base 10 to binary, and then how to perform arithmetic operations on your binary numbers, it also teaches you about computer circuits (I assume most of this you should remember if you took discrete math)
- How a simple computer works and how to interact with it using MARIE (an Assembly language, just not Microsoft Assembler)
- It will discuss Input/Output, most importantly the idea of polling a specific piece of code asking "Hey have you finished yet?" over and over until it is ready as opposed to just waiting for that piece of code to notify you when it is done. That is the concept of Interrupt-Driven I/O.

Those are the main things that computer architecture covers. I ASSUME that the Operating Systems class wants you to have knowledge of Interrupt Driven I/O (worth googling) but honestly, having never taken the Operating Systems class that is just a guess.

Honestly if they are okay with just having C/UNIX experience they may just be expecting you to be somewhat familiar with the idea of multi-threading whether you can code it or not, but yet again, i'm just guessing. You may try just emailing a teacher if you cannot get any extra information off of this thread about the Operating Systems class.

For the record, if you like math classes, Computer Architecture was actually a pretty fun class to take, a tad bit time consuming (6-10 hours a week of homework/studying), but kind of fun. If you have any more questions on the Computer Architecture class feel free to ask.

I think I got a fair exposure of some of the items you listed from Assembly and Discrete Math, but maybe not as in depth. I may end up just taking Computer Architecture, but I was thinking that OS would probably be more interesting and relevant to me. What were the assignments like in Computer Architecture? Did you write any code?

[benjenkinsv95]

Definitely not as in depth. Honestly, computer architecture and assembly touch on a lot of the same topics so if you liked assembly you might like computer architecture. I personally took them at the same time and got to see them build on each other.

Ermmm Computer Architecture is definitely not relevant. I mean the skills you would learn are nice, but they sure aren't relevant unless you end up working very close to the hardware.

The assignments are pretty similar to discrete math, though some of the questions won't need a complex solution and will instead just want an answer out of the book. Some of the problems you will remember would be boolean truth tables and logic gates but there is a lot of extra material. You will write code in Module 3 (Just looked it up) where you will be using MARIE to write assembly. By the way, MARIE is a tad bit weaker than MASM was as far as it's features go, so it can be a tad bit more work. But you only code in Module 3, though the whole assignment is almost all code.