Explaining our Hobby to Non-Programmers

[AJ]

Hi,

I have now run in to this problem a few times: someone who maybe just has a little Windows experience looking blankly when you say that Operating System Development is a hobby. They then say, "What's that then?".

About the best I can think of is something along the lines of "Well, Windows is an OS - it lets you run your programs and talks to the PC. I'm interested in creating something that does a similar job.". The problem is that this statement is not entirely true.

I had one friend say, "Oh, you mean it runs from before the point where Windows runs? You've made a program that runs in DOS". Nononononono!

I'd be interested how anyone else gets around this problem - short of just avoiding it or saying "it's too complicated"

Cheers,
Adam

[Slota]

For non-programmers, tell them that OSdev is something beyond infinity. More pleasing than telling them "something too complicated".
For generic programmers, explain it the your way.

[kmtdk]

well
you cant
unless you make a map ( or something simalry) and draw the boot process.
then you might be able to "tell" it xD

KMT dk

[xyjamepa]

To be honest,I don't tell people I'm doing this...

[kmtdk]

i stopped saying it so much, due to the fact that many people dont know what os means, and those who do, think you can build windows ...
so they "kill" the proudness of beeing an os dev.

[piranha]

I have told like, 6 people.
4 of them were my friends, and 3 of them understood it. 1 I had to say "The part of the computer that runs when it starts up. Like windows, but totally different".

2 were a couple teachers at my school,. and they understood it too, so...

-JL

[yemista]

OS dev is my secret life

[earlz]

Well a few hours ago at school, I stuck my thumb drive in a computer. I got to the openbsd boot prompt typed "boot kernel.bin" to start my kernel, which basically just puts jibberish and techno-babble on the screen and my teacher yelled "What are you doing!!?" and I turned it off took out my thumb drive, turned it back on(to boot windows) and told my teacher I was having the computer divide by zero... rofl

[AndrewAPrice]

Well a few hours ago at school, I stuck my thumb drive in a computer. I got to the openbsd boot prompt typed "boot kernel.bin" to start my kernel, which basically just puts jibberish and techno-babble on the screen and my teacher yelled "What are you doing!!?" and I turned it off took out my thumb drive, turned it back on(to boot windows) and told my teacher I was having the computer divide by zero... rofl

Try something more specific:
'I'm testing if the interrupt handling routines located at the address specified in the Interrupt Descriptor Table at the offset of the interrupt being called handles the exception gracefully and notifies the process running in userspace."
Extend the sentence out as long as you can.

[linuxfood]

I typically just ramble about whatever I'm working on without regard to my audiences' ability to understand.

This typically leaves them with the impression that I'm a total nerd.
I'm alright with that.

If I actually care about their understanding of the topic, I may go into depth, but not generally.
Some of my greatest epiphanies have come from rambling at people.

-B

I am no longer a lurker here, hooray.

[LoknarGor]

Most of my friends that do know how to program don't understand much past the higher-level abstractions, so I tend to keep these kinds of hobbies to myself.

EDIT: How did I accidently submit this?

When I do talk about OS Dev, I usually go into deep detail and people usually either zone out or change the topic.

[Troy Martin]

What Piranha said. Almost exactly.

I am no longer a lurker here, hooray.

Congratz!

[DeletedAccount]

Hmm... I can understand you . But probly most people will ask "what is use of creating an os ?" Most people have told me to focus my engery on something new and innovative than reinventing the wheel . But I may come up wit a better wheel or find a flaw in the existing wheel .

Regards
Thomas Mathew

[Solar]

I wouldn't talk about this to people who know only Windows (or only Windows and Linux). One, they wouldn't understand it anyway, and two, no sense in bragging about your beautiful boat to someone who's never seen the sea.

[xyjamepa]

One, they wouldn't understand it anyway, and two, no sense in bragging about your beautiful boat to someone who's never seen the sea.

Wow,this is so right Solar.