Ethan's Computer Science Journey

 Wow... It really is the last week of CST 334. I vividly remember the week when we went through and downloaded Docker. Using PowerShell and terminal seemed like something straight out of a movie, but learning low-level stuff like that is key to success as a computer scientist. The PA codes were also a hurdle to get accustomed to. Coding tasks are always daunting, but doing it in C was even more of a pain. But once again, languages where you're in charge of memory allocation are very important and equally important to learn. Over the course, we learned about processes and how you manage them. We had a lot of emphasis on memory virtualization, and then we had the midterm. Then, concurrency and persistence. And as I'm writing this, I'm preparing for the upcoming final exam. As for the final exam, I will try to be more cognizant of the time. On the previous midterm, I had been surprised by the time, as I thought I had more. I did all the big questions to realize I only had 12 m...

 This week has been hectic as I am in a totally different continent, fifteen hours ahead of my normal time zone. But I packed accordingly so I’ve been able to keep up on lecture readings and notes. From this weeks reading, I have learned that a file system is a crucial component of an operating system, responsible for organizing and managing data from a disk. The very simple file system serves as a foundational model to understand core concepts. File systems utilize inodes, or index nodes to store metadata about files, such as permissions, size, and pointers to data blocks. Inodes can employ multi-level indexing, including direct, indirect, and double/triple indirect pointers, to affinity handle files or varying sizes. Directories are structured as special files containing mappings of human-readable names to inode numbers, allowing the system to locate files through path traversal. Free space is managed using bitmaps (for inodes and data blocks), ensuring efficient allocation and d...