December 6, 2021

Advent of FoC Day 5: Minimalist Computing with Mu

Hi!

Welcome to the 5th day of Advent of Future of Code!.

The Task

Today we are going to be playing with Mu a trusted computer that contains no C.

Mu is a minimalist computing stack. Mu programs are memory-safe. They’re converted to bootable disk images using a tiny, auditable toolchain without any external dependencies. The generated disk images are designed to run on bare-metal x86 processors without an OS.

In today’s task, we’ll dip our toes in Mu and learn something about our x86 processors. This process will lay the foundation for more interesting graphical programs.

Follow the instructions to get your first Mu program running here

Resources

• Project Repository
• Project Author on Twitter: @akkartik (be kind)
• There will be a thread for this task in the #share-your-work channel at the Future of Coding Slack

Rule Reminder

You should try to setup the project and complete the task, you can go further if you want.

Deliverable

• A video recording of you going through the whole process “thinking out loud”
• A transcription/notes/blogpost/twitter thread of the experience

Do

• Tell what’s your thinking process
• Explain when / where you get stuck, confused or frustrated
• Explain when something surprises you
• Explain if a thing reminds you of something else (for better or worse)
• Keep it positive and constructive

Don’t

• Say things you wouldn’t say face to face
• Tell how it should be fixed
• Propose features or changes
• Tell them to rewrite it in Rust
• Highlight superfluous details that don’t affect the task at hand (Unless requested by the project)

And above all, have fun!