
Andrew S. Tanenbaum's FAQ - MatthiasP
http://www.cs.vu.nl/~ast/home/faq.html
======
simonebrunozzi
I met Prof. Tanenbaum in 2008, when I pitched AWS (Amazon Web Services) to the
university staff. (I was Tech Evangelist for AWS in EMEA at the time).

I only knew about him because of his "fights" with Linus Torvalds, and because
I've studied on a couple of his books (which I found excellent).

Meeting him was a big surprise: extremely funny, friendly, provocative, very
smart, and in general someone you could instantly like. I loved when he would
think about something and just close one eye, raise the other one to the
ceiling, and make one of the funniest faces ever.

I felt so happy afterwards, for the honor of meeting him, and for the joy that
derived from that attitude of his.

I wish every professor was as enjoyable (and competent) as him.

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song
I strongly recommend reading all of his books. They are very clear and non
boring and the knowledge you get from understanding them is really the basics
of what any programer should know I believe (well except maybe for the
distributed systems book).

After reading this faq, I'm very curious about the travel book.

~~~
avinassh
I love his Operating Systems book [0] which explains OS Concepts using Minix
code

[0] -
[http://www.amazon.com/dp/0131429388](http://www.amazon.com/dp/0131429388)

~~~
petilon
I recommend buying your computer books in India. US Price for this book is
$150 USD. India price is around Rs. 427 which is around $7 USD. Textbook
prices, like everything related to education and healthcare are excessively
high in the US. A reasonable price would be around $50, which is what this
book would cost if it wasn't a textbook.

The same book in Amazon India: [http://www.amazon.in/Operating-Systems-
Implementation-Tanenb...](http://www.amazon.in/Operating-Systems-
Implementation-Tanenbaum-
Andrew/dp/8120329554/ref=sr_1_4?ie=UTF8&qid=1426602500&sr=8-4&keywords=tanenbaum)

Update: Cheaper books bought in India may not be commercially exported out of
India

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SSLy
Yeah, do they ship to Europe?

~~~
carlesfe
Not to Spain, at least: "Sorry, this item can't be shipped to your selected
address."

~~~
lobo_tuerto
And not to México either... :(

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micheljansen
> Will somebody please explain to me why 'ezel' (donkey) is masculine, 'paard'
> (horse) is neuter and 'antilope' (antelope) is feminine?

Don't worry, Dutch people don't know this either. Unfortunately that means for
each word you'll have to learn whether it's a "de" or a "het" word. Something
that slowly happens over time as your vocabulary expands. This is one of the
main reasons why Dutch has a reputation of being difficult to master.

~~~
xiaq
You must be joking about Dutch being difficult to master. Dutch grammar is in
every aspect simpler than German. The orthography is a bit awkward though.

Also, it is weird that Tannenbaum makes a difference between masculine and
feminine at all, since in standard Netherlandic Dutch they have since long ago
merged into the common gender ("de" word). I guess he just got that knowledge
from some old grammar book...

~~~
danieldk
_Also, it is weird that Tannenbaum makes a difference between masculine and
feminine at all, since in standard Netherlandic Dutch they have since long ago
merged into the common gender ( "de" word)._

Yes, but it is still relevant for pronouns:

    
    
      Dit is een ezel, [hij/zij/het] staat in de wei.
    

Whether most speakers actually know the correct gender and thus pronoun is
another question ;).

~~~
gpvos
Actually, in modern Dutch the actual sex of the animal determines the gender
to use, not the grammatical gender. If unknown, use the male form. (This may
be different in Flanders.)

The difference between "het" and "de" is actually also eroding at the moment.

~~~
danieldk
_Actually, in modern Dutch the actual sex of the animal determines the gender
to use, not the grammatical gender. If unknown, use the male form. (This may
be different in Flanders.)_

...if you know the sex of the animal. Also see here (the 'Toelichting'):

[http://taaladvies.net/taal/advies/vraag/1631/zijn_haar_de_mu...](http://taaladvies.net/taal/advies/vraag/1631/zijn_haar_de_muis_heeft_staart_bezeerd/)

Of course, these annoyances only exist because the distinction is going away,
but hasn't gone completely.

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profil
> It was so strange to be in an environment with people having I.Q.'s below
> 150 and where it wasn't necessary to study 12, 13, 14 hours a day, seven
> days a week just to keep up.

Is this true? Seems crazy, how do you stand doing this for ~5 years?

~~~
willjack
Slight exaggeration on the IQ, less so on the amount of work.

Source: 2nd year undergrad sitting in MIT lecture now, running on 3 hours of
sleep.

~~~
levosmetalo
> Source: 2nd year undergrad sitting in MIT lecture now, running on 3 hours of
> sleep.

Sorry to interrupt you, but if you are reading HN while sitting on your
lectures, why not just go home and get some sleep?

~~~
andrewflnr
Sometimes the only reason you go to lecture is to be sure to catch important
announcements. You can to that with little sleep, and in the meantime, you
need something low-effort to keep you awake. So there's one theory.

~~~
levosmetalo
Or you can buy a beer once a week to someone that will send you "important
announcements" by email, and having a good solid sleep in own bed ;)

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nkantar
> I spent a lot of time working for the Sierra Club and lobbying in Sacramento
> for a bill to protect San Francisco Bay from developers.

I imagine he meant a different kind of developers than those who are taking
(or have taken) over the area.

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arca_vorago
I have listened to as many of his lectures as I can find, and I am very
interested in the work he is doing on Minix 3. 10k lines of code in the kernel
makes for an easily approachable learning environment in my opinion.

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pluma
Q: What inspired you to produce a personal FAQ?

A: See Computer Networks, 3rd edition, page 663.

Did you just tell me to go fuck myself?

I believe I did, Bob. I believe I did.

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Koekoeksklok
Mr. Tanenbaum has retired from the Vrije Universiteit recently, see here:
[http://www.few.vu.nl/~ast/afscheid](http://www.few.vu.nl/~ast/afscheid)

