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Arguably the lower level abstractions are more interesting too! how exactly Windows does ring-0 is less interesting than writing your own ring-0! And unless you
by arjvik 1mo ago
Arguably the lower level abstractions are more interesting too! how exactly Windows does ring-0 is less interesting than writing your own ring-0! And unless you care about writing driver-level software for Windows or contributing to the kernel, learning this is also less useful.
I'm essentially arguing that unless you work at MSFT, there's next to no reason to learn that specific abstraction layer.
- LatencyKills 1mo ago> I'm essentially arguing that unless you work at MSFT, there's next to no reason to learn that specific abstraction layer. Really? Understanding the cost of ring transitions is incredibly useful. I recently consulted with a company that was having horrible performance issues, and it came down to the fact that the primary developer didn't know that certain Win32 calls forced ring transitions. The entire fix was switching from a mutex to a critical section (one causes a ring transition, the other doesn't). Treating the OS like an impenetrable black box will bite upcoming engineers/companies... eventually.
- arjvik 27d agoThis makes sense, and I guess as someone who’s never written Windows software I didn’t realize it was a leaky abstraction!