Andrew S. Tanenbaum Receives ACM Software System Award

I’ll never forget this. I was listening to a talk by Reed Hastings (Netflix Founder/CEO) at (I think was) Stanford. He was explaining how he came up with the idea of Netflix. A student asked: “when did you realize you had to switch to the internet”. At which he replied: “that was the idea from the beginning. We knew networks were going to become what they are today. Look, there’s a saying in a CS textbook that says: ‘never underestimate the bandwidth of a truck full of tapes over the interstate’. We knew we had to ship the DVDs first until at some point the network would reach our desired level”.

While I was watching that i said: “DUDE! I remember that quote (and that illustration)”. Went to my text book and there it was. In Tanenbaum’s networking textbook.

Aside from the anecdote, this guy has had a huge influence in the whole industry (not even mentioning the Kernel debates).

Well-deserved, congrats Andrew. I still have his distributed systems textbooks from way back when, and still wish Minix had won and its microkernel model had become the basis of the FOSS *nix ecosystem.

Also in case anyone is not aware, Andrew runs the election science blog Electoral Vote [1], using an electoral college poll model to analyze and predict US elections. One of the better US political sites out there.

[1]:https://www.electoral-vote.com/evp2024/Info/welcome.html

I was failing badly in my computer architecture courses. Received a 5% score in one of the mid-terms. Switched from the recommended book to Andrew's book and did nothing apart from read it everyday for 2 hours. Received 100% in the final. Such an amazingly approachable book. :-)

This is a richly deserved award for a great educator who makes computer science both accessible and enjoyable.

Structures computer organisation is supposed to be a textbook but it's written so well I found myself reading it cover to cover like a thriller.

You won't find many people saying that about Knuth for example (not to say anything against Knuth who is amazing in his own way).

I see ASTs books, in particular the hands-on Minix ones, as sitting on the same “plane” as the philosophy espoused in The Night Watch paper. Ultimately the paper is about a level of comfort with reality that is at it’s core rooted in familiarity with rather than ignorance due to abstractions, and having learned fearlessness rather than helplessness. While it is highly unlikely you will be having a debugging session that has you executing kernel-level code alongside having an oscilloscope/logic probe hooked up to the pins of a processor chip to monitor data lines (though we all know someone who does this without a second thought), having this level of knowledge and comfort with being ever so slightly closer to the silicone, the data sheet of the processor somewhere near by, the memory segmentation modes not too alien of a concept, is a great boon to a software developer. It is a leap that I think everyone should try just once, and with it, abolish any notion of mental barriers that prevent one from understanding how things really work.

Not to mention MINIX is hidden away in almost every modern Intel CPU as part of its Management Engine. This little known fact makes it one of the most widely distributed operating systems.

I read Operating Systems: Design and Implementation in 1988 or 1989, and it was an insightful and pleasing experience. I only wished, at the time, that there was some Unix-like OS that was "free" (for some intuitive value of the word "free", rather than the formal definition, which I hadn't heard of yet at the time). This could have been Minix.

His book “Computer Networks” was one of my favourites in my CompSci study days. Many years later I gave lectures on Distributed Systems at a business school and based the material on the book. Still feels relevant, even today.

It's kind of sad systems research pretty much stopped at this point. I really was hoping that by 2024 I'd be running a distributed operating system where processes could be be freely migrated between my phone, desktop, laptop and NAS without too much of a hitch.

Another awesome fact about Tanenbaum is that he was the person behind electoral-vote.com. Prior to everyone having their own model and Nate Silver (err, should I say Poblano?) running the table in 2008, this was the place to go understand the 2004 US Presidential Election between Bush and Kerry. Hugely helpful for many people to understand polling and statistics.

I have read Tanenbaum's book twice. Really great book. Very dense in information but enjoyable as well. That and the Common Lisp Reference Manual were at some point my favorite CS readings. I was reading them in printed form.

I want to appreciate Andrew Tanenbaum for making possible the world's most popular OS, Intel ME. This system has been made absolutely right in every its piece except license. Minix under GPL would not let megagorporations to backdoor every functional x86 chip on the planet.

The Amsterdam Compiler Kit is also his work (along with Ceriel Jacobs):

  https://github.com/davidgiven/ack

Just as Minix perhaps could've been Linux, The Amsterdam Compiler Kit could've been gcc, but for licensing issues:

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2001/apr/10/firstchapters....

Err, perhaps I'm missing something, but if the ACM Software System Award is presented to an institution or individual(s) recognized for developing a software system that has had a lasting influence, how come Linus hasn't got his yet?

I came across Tanenbaum's Operating Systems book during my CS and it had a huge influence over me, till then I was a huge Windows nerd and after reading the book I felt like I was being cheated by Windows, like I was denied something which was rightfully mine.

I hated my labs as it had only Windows, started exploring *nix systems post class and never went back.

Thank you Mr.Andrew and congratulations.

It's funny to see how they highlight that it inspired Linux, ehile Tanenbaum heavily criticized it for not being a microkernel :D

Along with K&R (and K and Plauger’s “Software Tools”), the Dragon book, Bentley’s Programming Pearls, and Holzmann’s Beyond Photography, AST’s books were the most formative in my life (I started coding in 1976 but was self-taught until early 80s when I got to college and read all these brilliant works). Long overdue recognition; so many people benefited from the lucidity of these minds.

Man, his Computer Networks books were dense but they had a lot of good stuff in them. They also had really good and fun looking covers.

I was myself taught Computer Architecture in 1991 using the Tanenbaum SCO book, and many years later taught the Computer Architecture course for four years using the SCO book (a later edition, but still!). A true classic, and if anything, it is a wonder that Tanenbaum had not already received the award.

Every student should read Tanenbaum's "Structured Computer Organization". It was the first book which showed me the logical layering involved in a "Computer System" which is absolutely essential to understanding this field.

is MINIX abandonware now? Many years ago I tried to install the release that works (or comes bundled) with a light window manager but it was not trivial and it looked pretty abandoned even back then.

He wrote great books. I am ashamed to admit his OS book served as a monitor support on my desk for some time.

So what is the outcome of the kernel war? Performant micro-kernels have settled it no?

IIRC, Structured Computer Organization played the same role for me, back in the day, that I think From Nand to Tetris has for many of you all.

Still have a cd-rom with copy of minix3, from when he had a talk in my university. His books on OS and Networking are very approachable and fun read!

For who does not know, his books used as textbook in South American universities for years during 90s.

Anyone remembers the legendary Torvalds-Tanenbaum debates? What were they exacly about?

I'm genuinely surprised this hasn't happened already!

Well ge wrote complex textbooks that spoiled my college days

It's so sad that all the work on Minix3 has stopped.

Hell yeah! Well deserved. I had a blast with some of his books. Especially _Operating Systems: Design and Implementation_ and _Computer Networks_. Legend