Thread: What is system programming?

Originally Posted by hellogamesmaste

However, C is supposedly mainly targeted toward systems programming, but I don't really know what this means.

As a hobby, what can I do in systems programming? examples? is it just things like writing device drivers, editing operating system code etc?

The answer to the last question is yes, that is the general realm of systems programming (hardware and OS).

However, in terms of "things you can try" in C you are not limited to just system programming. Compilers and interpreters are written in C more often than anything else, ha ha ha. Obviously, networking is also common.

It is important to understand that because of the nature, and perhaps history, of C, there is not really anything that is not possible to do with it, it is just a question of how much work you will have to do. The greater the extent of existing libraries to assist you in your goal is the major factor in this question.

But that is pretty well covered. I've been programming in C for a little over a year, and two of the big "popular" API's that I got into to some extent were gtk, which is GUI stuff, and openGL. The basic GL library is actually a C API, altho people seem to associate 3D graphics with C++. I have noticed a significant percentage of cross-platform libraries with multiple language bindings are actually written in C, and then "wrapper" API's are added on for the other languages. Like, probably most common multi-language libraries are exactly that.

AFAIK C is just a nice lite, very fast, very portable computer language. That's why people use it to do systems programming, which everything else is usually built on top of (in this sense C is the most portable language). But mostly it is up to you to decide what to do with it.

Originally Posted by hellogamesmaste

Does anyone here do systems programming for fun? what sort of programs do you write?

Systems programming is mostly what you said: underlying operating system processes... things that support the development of applications for the vast majority of programmers.

I write stuff for fun all the time. Things other people may not regard as fun. Custom data base low-level I/O routines, memory management tools, custom interpreters for newly developed specialized languages, machine emulators, that sort of stuff. Not sure if those would normally qualify as mere 'simple applications'. Many of these are destined to be libraries for future tools (at least I hope they'll have longevity)... or they may just be exercises for my personal amusement. You never know. I've written a Rubik's Cube solver-script interpreter, only to discover that a year later I could use most of that code in a general purpose interpreter for an automated intranet webpage builder suite. Saved me at least 3 weeks of development time.

At work, usually, unfortunately, I don't get to exercise my brain cells all that much. I end up writing quickie 'tools' - data crunchers. So that's why I tend to get interested in so-called systems stuff and the theories and algorithms they may need when I'm on my own time.