
Retirement of Prof. Andy Tanenbaum - Morgawr
http://www.cs.vu.nl/tanenbaum/
======
Jare
And maybe the only person to ever successfully troll Linus Torvalds and then
get an apology from him (ok just an excuse to link the epic debate in [1]).

Thanks Mr. Tanenbaum, your various works have been a huge inspiration as well
as incredibly interesting to read or tinker with.

[1]:
[https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/comp.os....](https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups=#!topic/comp.os.minix/wlhw16QWltI%5B1-25-false%5D)

~~~
GuiA
_" Don`t get me wrong, I am not unhappy with LINUX. It will get all the people
who want to turn MINIX in BSD UNIX off my back. But in all honesty, I would
suggest that people who want a MODERN "free" OS look around for a microkernel-
based, portable OS, like maybe GNU or something like that."_

Hehehe.

~~~
yellowapple
What's even more amusing about that remark is that - as of MINIX3, at least -
MINIX has in fact adopted the NetBSD userland.

~~~
pionar
He is not talking about the userland, he's talking about the kernel structure,
mirco vs. monolithic.

~~~
kjs3
Ya...part of the design goal is that a microkernel as envisioned by AST should
be able to able to have interchangeable userlands, including multiple
different userlands running at the same time. So in that sense, AST was spot
on.

~~~
jacquesm
Oh, and:

\- device drivers as processes (so you can actually debug them)

\- increased security by isolating various parts of the core OS _from each
other_

\- easy scaling from single machine to cluster by message passing

\- treating devices as networked resources

\- file systems in userspace (which we have now with FUSE)

and so on.

The benefits of microkernels go a lot further than just being able to use
multiple userlands.

------
winter_blue
I can't really emphasize enough how well-written his books are. I picked up
some of Tanenbaum's books early in high school (specifically: Structured
Computer Organization, Modern Operating Systems, and Computer Networks). They
were so well-written and engaging they I could hardly take my eyes off of 'em.
They really cultivated an interest and love for Computer Science in me.

~~~
kxr
I always liked how he would crack the ocassional joke every now and then in
his books. "Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes
hurtling down the highway."

~~~
cstross
That's not actually a joke, once you do the math ...

~~~
chc
Jokes don't have to be false — it's actually in vogue these days for jokes to
be accurate observations of reality stated in funny ways. For example, Louis
CK's joke about the unfairness of banking fee structures:

 _Ever get so broke that the bank charges you money for not having enough
money? The bank calls up and says "Hi, we're calling because you don't have
enough money." And you go, "I know!" So they say, "You have insufficient
funds." "Yep, that's a good way of putting it too, I'd agree with that. I find
my funds to be grossly insufficient." "You only have $20, so we're going to
have to charge you $15." Fifteen dollars, that's how much it costs to own $20.
But here's the fucked-up part — now I only have five. Now I don't even have
the money that I paid to have._

I think Tanenbaum's joke is a good example of this sort of humor.

------
mox1
My small Tanenbaum story. When Prof. Tanenbaum came to speak at my college I
showed up a bit late to a very packed room.

Many people were standing in the back, but it looked like there was one seat
left in the first row, a few seats in. I proceeded to walk up, force everyone
to stand up and politely asked everyone to move so I could use the last seat.
Some old crusty professor didn't hear me , so I had to explicitly ask him to
move.

About 1 minute later the crusty old professor stood up, walked back behind me
and started his speech :). Oops. All my classmates asked me afterward WTF was
wrong with me...

~~~
e40
Reminds me of when I was at Dark Carnival in Berkeley browsing books. There
was this comfy chair in the middle of the room, so I sat down to read a little
of the book I was browsing. It was something by Poul Anderson, from the
display next to the chair.

So, I'm sitting there reading and a crowd starts to gather. I look up and a
bunch of people are looking at me. There's this older gentleman closer than
the others. Then, it dawned on me, it was Poul Anderson. Oops. There to sign
copies of his new book.

------
hoopism
My MOS book was stolen from my car when I went to college. I like to think a
drug addict somewhere will go on to develop the next great operating system.

~~~
mdemare
I put a few outdated textbooks outside with the trash in Amsterdam, and when I
came back after getting groceries, there was this homeless guy sitting on the
curb, enthralled in Structure of Computer Organization.

~~~
da02
Have you seen any differences between Amsterdam homeless and American
homeless?

~~~
mikeash
My inner (OK, outer) snide cynic says that he already answered your question.

------
resca79
My 5 cents, an email send to Tanenbaum.

>Hi Professor,

>I'm interested a PH.D in Amsterdam. I have worked in

>Accenture Italy since one year.

>There are a opportunity to PH.D in your study group?

>Best Regards ..

After 5 minutes

>I don't have any openings. Sorry

>Andy Tanenbaum

This is a simple mail, but I liked his courtesy and fast response

~~~
darkmighty
You write english text with an italian accent. Bravo.

~~~
resca79
I try to reproduce my usual speaking. I want to be coherent :D

------
mdemare
When I was sixteen, I attended open house classes for computer science for
both universities in Amsterdam, the UvA, and the VU. At the UvA, they let us
draw Mickey Mouse in Pascal on an ancient Mac.

At the VU, Andy Tanenbaum gave a lecture on operating systems, and handed out
floppy disks with Minix at the end. All I knew then was DOS. Mind blown. Thank
you ast!

------
peter303
In the US the university administration encourages even distinguished
professors to retire in order to hire new faculty. It allows to hire another
distinguished professor who will bring in more research money and quality
students. Full professor slots are very limited even at the richest US
colleges. A Supreme Court decision a couple decades ago prevents forced
retirement of faculty at any age. But the administration guilts the professor
about hurting department prestige. And the retiring professor can often
negotiate some aspects of his replacement. Its resembles debates about when US
Supreme Court justices should retire whom also have lifetime tenure.

~~~
jschulenklopper
Some context: Andy Tanenbaum is born in March 1944, so already 70. That's five
years after the common retirement age for his age group in The Netherlands
(assuming that he paid his social taxes here).

So, in all respect a well-deserved retirement... and I guess that retired or
not doesn't stop him contributing to the CS field. Well, he will have less
Ph.D.-students, so more time to writing, programming and lecturing!

------
erkose
A wonderful contribution: Modern Operating Systems by Andrew S. Tanenbaum.

~~~
mhurron
Is it $125.75 Kindle Edition wonderful?

So is this book the type of OS book that is fantastic knowledge for technical
people to really know about their computer or is it really just aimed at those
that want to move into OS development?

~~~
erkose
The book presents OS theory and is more suitable for OS developers.

~~~
speleding
In my opinion a well rounded developer needs a good understanding of what
happens at the OS level, even if he is never going to write a device driver.
Tanenbaum's books are excellent for that.

------
fasteo
Best wishes for his retirement.

I have a clear memory of my first Minix[1] boot. It was in an old PC-XT (Intel
8088) with 640Kb of RAM and 10MB Hard drive. Coming from MS-DOS, this was pure
black magic to me.

[1] [http://www.minix3.org/](http://www.minix3.org/)

------
jgrahamc
Best wishes for an enjoyable retirement and thanks for all the great books.

------
tempodox
I will never forget minix. This tiny unix booted from one floppy and ran on
the Atari ST (among others). It even had a C compiler. Tanenbaum built it as
an OS education tool.

~~~
DanBC
How does it compare to TomsRtBt?

[http://www.toms.net/rb/tomsrtbt.FAQ](http://www.toms.net/rb/tomsrtbt.FAQ)

~~~
twotwotwo
Heh, I don't think parent's point is that minix is the most practical small
UNIX option _now_ so much as that it was a big deal for them back in their
Atari ST days.

~~~
sitkack
As someone who was really trying to get 386BSD when I was kid, I had no idea
that minix already ran on my Amiga 500. :( Time machine me would have loved to
run this.

------
jschulenklopper
Ah... I really enjoyed the courses by 'ast' at the VU Amsterdam: Computer
Architecture, Computer Networks and Modern Operating Systems. With respect for
the other teaching staff, but Andy somehow was the modest, funny and inspiring
hero of the CS department. The clarity and completeness of the books, the
relevant assignments and the humor and kindness in his lectures... let's hope
that his retirement doesn't stop him making contributions to the field.
Unbelievable that he's been at the VU Amsterdam for 43 years.

Signing up for farewell lecture now...

------
jacquesm
Thank you very much Andrew, I won't ever forget our talks at your house in
Buitenveldert/Amstelveen they came at a very important point in my life and
made a positive and lasting impact. You were amazingly accessible even to
'outsiders'. I regret never to have been able to study at the VU, I'd have
happily done so. One thing you did is to instill a life-long habit of looking
at the world as an asynchronous hard real time affair and to appreciate micro-
kernels as a very elegant solution to a lot of problems.

------
danielweber
Oh, Tanenbaum. His book is still my OS bible.

~~~
selimthegrim
Was that an intentional pun?

~~~
Someone
For those who don't get the question:
[http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Tannenbaum](http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Tannenbaum)

------
mrpippy
He still has a Sun Blade 100 on his desk?

~~~
codezero
I don't doubt it. When I worked at a university, some of the very old profs
still had very old computers dating into the 90s. I was pretty amazed that
they even worked, but most of them only ever used them once every few weeks or
months.

~~~
Erwin
Perhaps he's using it just as an X server. Around 15 ago, some of the other
people on my systems programming team didn't care to run a fat Linux PC
desktop -- they just had a X machine that booted over the network from a "big"
UNIX server and logged into to their FVWM or such environment. That's handy as
you could go and login on any other X workstation and get the same desktop
environment.

~~~
codezero
Looking at the Wiki page, the Sun Blade 100 dates from 2000 to 2006, PCs from
that era were reasonably powerful by most modern standards, just lacked 1) a
lot of cores, 2) shitloads of memory. For most uses, they are still great for
daily tasks, and at a university, he probably had access to some remote
supercomputer if he really needed it :P

My ageist perspective here is that what you're describing takes a bit of work
and most "older" profs can't be arsed to do that work, so the simplest
explanation is that he just still runs an old computer :)

~~~
dredmorbius
Letting someone else worry about your backups and such is a benefit of
centralized servers w/ remote X11 displays. Assuming you trust the network.

------
sarreph
I found the actor to portray his biopic, _Stephen Tobolwsky_.[1]

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Tobolowsky](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephen_Tobolowsky)

------
jestinjoy1
The man responsible for explaining OS and Network topics for masses. The
professor who "attacked" programmer.

From Computer Networks Book DNS section

"Take the pro domain,for example. It is for qualified professionals. But who
is a professional? Doctors and lawyers clearly are professionals. But what
about freelance photographers,piano teachers, magicians, plumbers, barbers,
exterminators, tattoo artists, mercenaries, and prostitutes? Are these
occupations eligible? According to whom?"

------
fmax30
This is one of the guys that i have learned a lot from. Even though i have
never seen him nor have i ever met him.

But his words still echo in my mind. Modern Operating Systems and Computer
Networks , both extremely well written. They certainly did taught me alot.

Here is to Prof. Tanenbaum , Thank you sir , for teaching me .Even though i've
never met you nor i may ever meet you in this life but you should know that
some guy from South Asia is thanking you from the bottom of his heart.

------
mslot
Feel privileged to have studied at his department, and his lessons on
microkernels and distributed operating systems are at the heart of what I do
today.

------
ginsmar
I don't know you Mr. Tanenbaum, but you were my first teacher. God bless you.

------
smegel
"Designed and implemented MINIX, on which Linux was developed"

Is that really true?

~~~
gedrap
Well... The link is not to onion, is it?

"In 1991, while attending the University of Helsinki, Torvalds became curious
about operating systems[31] and frustrated by the licensing of MINIX, which
limited it to educational use only. He began to work on his own operating
system which eventually became the Linux kernel.

Torvalds began the development of the Linux kernel on MINIX and applications
written for MINIX were also used on Linux. Later, Linux matured and further
Linux kernel development took place on Linux systems.GNU applications also
replaced all MINIX component"
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#Creation](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux#Creation)

------
justincormack
He is speaking about Minix at Eurobdscon later this year
[http://2014.eurobsdcon.org/talks-and-
schedule/](http://2014.eurobsdcon.org/talks-and-schedule/)

------
bagrow
That 'now' picture has to be pushing 20 years old...

------
TomMasz
His Computer Network book is one of the few that I never sold back to the
bookstore. Mine is less than 6 feet from me right now, should I need to
consult it.

------
wesnerm2
Besides his books on Networks and Operating Systems and his work on MINIX OS,
I also recall he launched the website electoral-vote.com.

------
cafard
I thought that Tanenbaum's book on operating systems was an excellent example
of what such a book should be.

------
arjn
I have two of his books on my shelf right now, I can see them from where I
sit. Thanks Prof Tanenbaum !

------
HomebrewCC
Is it allowed for non VU students to attend his final lecture?

~~~
Morgawr
It says everyone is invited, so I'd assume it's not just for VU students.

The Aula at the VU is pretty big and I hope there will be enough space for
everybody, but regardless they won't complain if non-students join as well (at
least I assume so).

I really wanted to attend as well, but unfortunately I will be away from the
country in those dates, you can take "my place" if you want :P

~~~
jschulenklopper
The Aula at the VU Amsterdam has 900 seats. With this kind of announcement
(and showing up at HN) I guess the seats will be filled quickly. Registration
is free, and it is polite and appreciated so the organizers know how many
people they can expect, but registration is not required. Anyhow, if you want
to attend the farewell lecture: show up early :-)

And it would not surprise me if they relocate the lecture to a bigger
auditorium nearby, if interest or registration goes way beyond 900.

------
davidrudder
Does anyone know if he will still run electoral-vote.com?

------
ravich2_7183
I wonder how sweetie 𝜋 will react to this news.

------
jskonhovd
Thank you Prof. Andy Tanenbaum.

------
akshayshinde7
Never saw the guy face to face, just read his books. Thought when I'll go to
US will meet him, sit for his lectures. Don't think it will happen now. :(

~~~
Tloewald
Going to the US to meet him or sit in his lectures was never going to be a
winning strategy ;)

~~~
LukeShu
Well, prior to ~1971, going to the US to meet him could have worked. :)

