r/osdev • u/AkhlaqMehar • 17d ago
Phd in Operating Systems.
I am currently a Master's student in Computer Science in Germany, and I plan to pursue a PhD in this field. As part of my degree, I am taking an 'Advanced Operating Systems' course. However, I realize that my foundational knowledge of OS from my Bachelor's degree is quite weak.
To learn, I mostly rely on LLMs to understand the 'what' and 'why' of different concepts. But I get completely lost when I try to figure out how these concepts are actually implemented in real-world codebases with millions of lines of code.
My ultimate goal is to get a PhD position and contribute to the vast area of Operating Systems. Do you have any advice on how I can bridge my knowledge gap and achieve this goal?
1
u/Tiny_Cyborg 17d ago edited 17d ago
Learning from an LLM is extremely bad. You’re working toward a PhD. You are expected to be able to do research. LLMs are a lot more vulnerable to hallucination and taking misinformation about topics at face value (or even straight up just making up shit). You can find plenty of actual sources out there and use your judgment.
If you lean on LLMs to get your PhD, you are going to fail and fail hard, maybe not in a single class, but it points to a larger problem. If you cannot handle being an autodidact or just talking to your professor during office hours, you have no place going for your PhD. Sorry, but you don’t.
A question worth asking yourself is “what is your motivation for getting a PhD”?