Hello Students,
This is me, Dr. Vijay D. Gokhale.
If you are aware of my initiative of ‘Undoing Lord Macaulay Myth’ and efforts of ‘Fighting With Academic Cancer’, then you must know that you can do both with one single philosophy : ‘Life For The Knowledge, By The Knowledge And Of The Knowledge.’
So how to do that? It begins with learning Operating System (OS). Learning any OS will do, but what if you learn that OS which gave birth to all other modern OSs?
Yes, that OS is UNIX.
Some may say that UNIX belongs to the 70’s and is thus outdated. But nothing gets outdated in knowledge. Instead, new things are built upon the strong foundation of old things and you can understand new things at their level best if you already know old things best.
After learning internals of UNIX, you can understand internals of any/all other OS like :
– Linux : Which is Free UNIX although it calls itself ‘GNU’.
– macOS : It is stated on Apple’s website that macOS is based upon Rock Solid Unix Philosophy.
– iOS : It is a small footprint of macOS.
– Android : It is ‘Androdized’ Linux.
– Windows : Its concepts are inspired(?) by UNIX, Mac, OS/2 and VMS.
So How to learn UNIX? Rather the question is : How to learn any OS?
According to me, there should be 4 steps :
01) Be End User of that OS
02) Be Developer of that OS.
03) Be Administrator of that OS.
04) Be Designer of that OS.
For UNIX, I sought about 27 books to accomplish above 4 steps. Believe me, after reading/understanding/applying any 5 of them (1 from 5 categories each), you will be safe from academic cancer. You will deserve the job you get. UNIX will mature you.
But Learning UNIX, is not everybody’s cup of tea. It is a divine task or say तपश्चर्या. It requires eternal patience.
The Great UNIX people also stated the same :
– UNIX and the Onion have one thing in common and that is ‘Both lead to tears as you go deeper and deeper’: A Quote From ‘The Magic Garden Explained’ by Berny Goodheart .
This is similar to the experiences of all Saints and Angels and Yoga people when they delve deep into their conscience to find answer to the question – “WHO AM I?”
– UNIX is based on Life’s philosophy – ‘Files have spaces and Processes have lives’ : A Quote By Kaare Christian.
This is very similar to प्रकृति-पुरुष सिद्धान्त in सांख्य तत्वज्ञान Or Adam-Eve from Bible.
Seriously, I mean it.
The first and the best book I have read about the design philosophy of UNIX is :
“The Design Of The Unix Operating System” By Maurice J. Bach, which is not at all trivial.
[ This is one of those books referred by Linus Torvalds himself before writing Linux. This is mentioned in ‘Understanding The Linux Kernel : By Cesati And Bovet’ ]
People who read ‘Bach’ ( Not for Exam-Going purpose ), will surely agree with me that this book says so many things without saying anything or just saying something. Simply speaking, there are too many ‘between-the-lines’ to understand from this book, although it is considerably small in size. Try comparing this book with K&R’s ‘C’ book or Stroustrup’s C++ book. Both are not trivial, although they are the definitively ‘must’ read.
More than two decades ago, I was a director from Drama background and thus I needed to understand the author’s ‘between-the-lines’ with all meaningful ‘pregnant pauses’. So when I read this book with all those ‘between-the-lines’, I came to know that the best way to understand this book is ‘repetition, repetition and repetition’ (भावाभ्यसनमभ्यासशीलनम् सततक्रिया|) and the best way of ‘repetition’ is ‘teaching’. As I am also a Doctor, and a teacher of medical subjects since 1992, the obvious choice was – I started teaching this book from 2003.
For the last 15 years I am teaching this book once per year for 4.5 months from Mid-December to April-End. Ever since, I have never looked back. I have never felt lack of students. The reason is probably my teaching method of linking this book’s philosophy with the philosophy of everybody’s life. Students have also learnt this book so passionately, that a few of them had agreed to stand throughout the course when there was no place to sit, even if they paid full fees in advance. It sounds romantic but, this is a fact. You may think that all of this makes no sense. But it did and it still does!! This reminds me of Mr. Dilip Kumar, the great legendary Hindi film actor, who once said in the movie ‘दिल दिया दर्द लिया’ (based on ‘Wuthering Heights’) : “ये दिलवालोंकी बात है मुरलि, इसे दिलवालेहि समझ सकते हैं।”
For last 15 years I am running UNIX System Design batches :
a) with a house-full quorum :
b) Without any advertisements/ banner/ pamphlets/ warranties/ guarantees/ computers/ cubicles/ A.C.
c) With गुरुकुल-like orthodox, school environment and fees that have been decided by the students of the previous batches.
d) Without any syllabus or job or exam orientation.
e) . . . with many other Noes and Don’ts.
Then an obvious question is bound to arise : Why am I writing this now? Is it not advertising or marketing?
No, not at all !!!
UNIX never needs marketing, neither do I.
You don’t need to join my classes to learn UNIX.
Rather, you should do this on your own, just like I did.
You can do so by getting the list of 27 books from any previous batch student from my class and following the 4-step path I mentioned earlier.
Then why am I doing this?
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Normally my previous batch is the source for my next batch. So I have never needed any sort of campaigning. But this time, as I mentioned at the top of this draft, I came across many Engineering college faculties and students. After attending my lectures, they suggested in their written feedbacks to keep them informed about all my upcoming seminars and class-batches. I found this as an elegant way to communicate with all of them ‘at once’.
Who should not join?
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First 3 lectures will be free to all. Limit will be the hall capacity. During these 3 lectures, you will get time to decide whether to join or not.
Although, a few conditions are crucial and hence must be mentioned beforehand (even before the introductory 3 lectures):
– Class timing will be late in the evening : 08:45 PM to 10:45 PM.
This timing has been decided considering both ‘company going’ and ‘college going’ students. Women-safety is of utmost importance. So, please do consider joining if and only if it is possible and convenient. Although there are many girls who have already completed the course or are doing so irrespective of all obstacles. I salute them.
– This class is not for any Syllabus or Job or Exam.
Learning UNIX is learning life and everybody will agree with me to the fact that life is neither syllabus nor job nor exam.
– Language of teaching is मराठी (there is no political motivation behind this).
Many of my CDAC students with ‘Hindi’ mother tongue did UNIX very well.
Unbelievable but true, one Irani, one Iraqi and one Afghan student have also attended UNIX lectures. Don’t ask me whether they understood or not. The answer is simple : I don’t know.
Who should join?
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– If You want to learn OS design from scratch and cannot read ‘between-the-lines’ from books OR
– If you want to learn OS design with experiences and morals from your life OR
– You want to be ‘Neo’ from ‘The Matrix’ and you are waiting for ‘Morpheus’ to give you the red-pill, THEN WELCOME AND SEE, HOW DEEP THE RABBIT-HOLE GOES !!!
God bless you all.
Dr. Gokhale Sir.
Notes
UNIX Notes will be available once the batch commences.
