Operating Systems

CS 342 is where the abstraction of "the computer just runs my program" finally breaks open: you learn how a kernel juggles processes, memory, and hardware so that dozens of programs can pretend they each own the machine. Expect a serious C/Unix project component on top of the written exams — typically building schedulers, synchronization primitives, or a small file system on Linux — which is where the Silberschatz concepts stop being vocabulary and start being code that deadlocks at 3am. Coming off CS 224 and CS 223, it's the bridge into systems-heavy electives like networks, databases, and distributed systems, and the course almost every backend or systems interview will quietly assume you've taken.