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My programming skills are still rudimentary but I'm curious to know how can one program an operating system from scratch . I know that one must understand how the hardware of the computer work and how it connects to each other and the computer software . But Is it possible to design an OS using predesigned modules that are concerned with the hardware part (like The class libraries in C++) .And can one design an operating system using C++ running on a windows framework ? Thanks in advance.

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closed as off topic by uther, Ulrich Dangel, bahamat, jasonwryan, Patrick Aug 9 '12 at 18:10


Those "predesigned modules that are concerned with the hardware part" are the operating system. –  bahamat Aug 9 '12 at 17:25
In a Comp Sci OS course, we had to write a simple OS from scratch in C++. No special libraries were used. I highly recommend Operating Systems Design and Implementation by Andrew S. Tanenbaum if you're interested in learning how to build an OS. This book was a huge inspiration to Linus Torvalds, the main brain behind Linux. –  Banjer Aug 9 '12 at 17:37
That's true, I did I similar course: we did a prototype OS... not in C++ (of course!), but in C! To access registers, we used some assembler like language. I remember I was very impressed because the OS had multiprogramming (with context switch and all), and if you remember, not even DOS had that! My only regret is that if I had done the course now, I would have not been completely clueless as to what I was doing. –  Emanuel Berg Aug 10 '12 at 2:39

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