This book (CS:APP) stems from an introductory systems course that we
developed at Carnegie Mellon University in the Fall of 1998, called
"Introduction to Computer Systems" (ICS). The presentation is based on
the following principles, which aim to help the students become better
programmers and to help prepare them for upper-level systems courses:
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Students should be introduced to computer systems from the perspective
of a programmer, rather from the more traditional perspective of a
system implementer.
What does this mean?
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Students should get a view of the complete system, comprising the
hardware, operating system, compiler, and network.
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Students learn best by developing and evaluating real programs that
run on real machines.
We cover data representations, machine level representations of C
programs, processor architecture, program optimizations, the memory
hierarchy, linking, exceptional control flow (exceptions, interrupts,
processes, and Unix signals), performance measurement, virtual memory
and memory management, system-level I/O, basic network programming,
and basic concurrent programming. These concepts are supported by
series of fun and hands-on lab assignments. See the manuscript
Preface for more details.
Course Materials for Instructors and Students
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The Student Site contains
additional material for the students.
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The Instructor Site
contains a complete turnkey solution for teaching the course.
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