CS456 - Systems Programming Spring 2026

Class Hours

Lectures are held Online on Teams

Office Hours

John Compton's office hours: 6-7PM Thursdays via Teams or by appointment via email or Teams.

Course Description

The catalog description for this course is:

"An introduction to both program translation and operating systems. There will be a survey of topics such as: top-down and bottom-up parsing, scanning, code generation, symbol table management, linkers and loaders, batch processing systems, interacting processes, multiprogramming systems, and memory management. "

Learning Outcomes

• Solid understanding of the Unix/Linux API.
• Basic understanding of programming language translation

Recommended text

System Programming in Linux - A Hands-On Introduction by Stewart N. Weiss. Can be ordered from here: https://nostarch.com/system-programming-linux