[MUD-Dev] Re: An Introduction

[J C Lawrence <claw#under,engr.sgi.com>]

On Wed, 08 Jul 1998 06:44:01 +0200 
Asmodai <Jeroen> wrote:

> When developing a Multi-User Environment, do you find knowledge of
> how operating systems work handy? 

"Extremely useful," would probably be the term I'd use.  Its not
essential as the design challenges and considerations of OS'es and
server s and applications overlap significantly.  That said, in my
early days I did a lot of reading of Tanenbaum's Minix books to good
effect.

> I mean, as far as I see it now, a lot of status flags, Inter Proces
> Communication and user interoperability resembles the way modern
> operating systems work. 

Bingo, as well as state preservation, process model, scheduling,
deadlock prevention, process synchonisation, event models, etc.

> I am currently delving into the book Modern Operating Systems 2nd
> Ed. by Andrew S. Tanenbaum and find many similiarities between mud
> operations and Operating Systems. Any thoughts on this matter?

Utterly agreed.  FWLIW the early days of Shades saw it as an OS
command shell as versus an application.  He didn't *quite* replace the
OS kernel and supports, but got close to it..

> Also, which books are recommended to start with network programming,
> preferably TCP/IP based and for C/C++. 

I like the Steven's TCP/IP books, but also hear good things about
Comer's (which I haven't looked at in detail).  There are also a
variety of pretty good web sites on the area (do a search on the
MUD-Dev archives, I psoted an extensive list recently).  

On the C/C++ side it really depends on where you are coming from.  I
start with K&R for C and went straight to Strousup for C++ (not a
generally recommended route), so can't comment terribly well there --
tho I do like Pohl's C++ books.

-- 
J C Lawrence                               Internet: claw#null,net
(Contractor)                               Internet: coder#ibm,net
---------(*)                     Internet: claw#under,engr.sgi.com
...Honourary Member of Clan McFud -- Teamer's Avenging Monolith...