Systems Programming and Networking Concepts

A set of vocabulary flashcards covering key concepts and definitions related to systems programming and networking as discussed in class.

Systems Programming

The activity of programming computer system software that provides services to other software and is performance constrained.

Application Programming

Aims to produce software that directly provides services to the user, such as word processors and web browsers.

Operating Systems

Software that manages computer hardware and provides an environment for executing application software.

Device Drivers

Software that enables communication between hardware and the operating system.

Compilers and Interpreters

Programs that translate high-level programming languages into machine code.

Network Protocols

Sets of rules that determine how data is transmitted and received over a network.

Firmware

Low-level software that controls hardware devices.

system() Function

Creates a process that runs a specified command in the host environment.

popen() Function

Opens a process to run a command by creating a pipe, forking, and invoking the shell.

Pipes

A method of enabling communication between processes; allows the output of one process to be used as input for another.