Book Image

Hands-On System Programming with Linux

By : Kaiwan N. Billimoria, Tigran Aivazian
Book Image

Hands-On System Programming with Linux

By: Kaiwan N. Billimoria, Tigran Aivazian

Overview of this book

The Linux OS and its embedded and server applications are critical components of today’s software infrastructure in a decentralized, networked universe. The industry's demand for proficient Linux developers is only rising with time. Hands-On System Programming with Linux gives you a solid theoretical base and practical industry-relevant descriptions, and covers the Linux system programming domain. It delves into the art and science of Linux application programming— system architecture, process memory and management, signaling, timers, pthreads, and file IO. This book goes beyond the use API X to do Y approach; it explains the concepts and theories required to understand programming interfaces and design decisions, the tradeoffs made by experienced developers when using them, and the rationale behind them. Troubleshooting tips and techniques are included in the concluding chapter. By the end of this book, you will have gained essential conceptual design knowledge and hands-on experience working with Linux system programming interfaces.
Table of Contents (21 chapters)

Best practices

In this section, we briefly enumerate what we consider to be industry best practices, though they are mostly generic and thus broad in scope; we will particularly look at them through the lens of the Linux systems programmer.

The empirical approach

The word empirical (according to the Cambridge English dictionary) means based on what is experienced or seen, rather than on theory. This is perhaps the critical principle to be followed. A fascinating article by Gustavo Duarte (mentioned here: https://www.infoq.com/news/2008/02/realitydrivendevelopment) states: "Action and experimentation are the cornerstones of empiricism. No attempt is made to subdue reality by extensive analysis and copious documentation...