C'è una frase di Andrew Tanenbaum, forse il più importante autore nella didattica dell'informatica, che mi piace considerare una sorta di manifesto dei miei corsi di Sistemi Operativi:
"Unfortunately, teaching only theory leaves the student with a lopsided view of what an operating system is really like. The theoretical topics that are usually covered in great detail in courses and books on operating systems, such as scheduling algorithms, are in practice not really that important. Subjects that really are important, such as I/O and file systems, are generally neglected because there is little theory about them." (da "Operating System, Design and Implementation", 3rd ed., p.16)