CST 334 - Week 2

 This week we covered processes and how the CPU handles them. We reviewed what constitutes a process and talked about different policies that guide a scheduler on how to handle them. One of the most interesting parts of this to me was seeing how these policies reflect how a human would make similar decisions if it were up to them. For example, I'm a bartender, and when I read about "Shortest Time to Completion" all I could think about was how this is similar to when I'm working a busy shift. I may have one ticket of drinks that consists of multi-step signature cocktails, when a ticket with just a glass of wine prints up. Usually, I'll pause the cocktail ticket, pour the glass of wine and then resume the original ticket. Making these connections made it much easier for me to get a grasp of how they would work in regards to computers. Some of the other schedules used were Round Robin, Shortest Job First, FIFO (First In, First Out) and LIFO (Last In, First Out), which all have their pros/cons. For example, Round Robin has a nearly immediate response time, but can cause slow turnaround times when many processes are running at once.