weird computing terms thread

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weird computing terms thread
« on: March 29, 2022, 01:52:04 pm »
i'll start:


Re: weird computing terms thread
« Reply #1 on: March 29, 2022, 01:57:16 pm »
i always thought 'killing' a process  was kind of weird.
like bruh, u can just stop it, or end it.

Re: weird computing terms thread
« Reply #2 on: March 29, 2022, 02:09:37 pm »
i always thought 'killing' a process  was kind of weird.
like bruh, u can just stop it, or end it.

stopping or ending a process implies that the process was asked to stop and it cleanly shuts down on its own. When you do this the process may be in the middle of something, like writing data to disk, and it will eventually stop when it is done doing whatever tasks it needed to do.

killing a process means you say "fuck you" and just get rid of any memory allocated to the process and halt any further execution, regardless of what the process was doing
*spork*

Re: weird computing terms thread
« Reply #3 on: March 29, 2022, 02:33:28 pm »
Quote
stopping or ending a process implies that the process was asked to stop... killing a process means you say "fuck you"

And yet, the "kill" command is used for all 32-odd types of signals, not just SIGKILL

It's a hardware term not a software term, but I'm fond of "mollyguard."  It's the plastic cover over a button, so pressing it it a two-step process, and the idea extended to other two-step processes for doing something you want people to think before doing.  And it was named after one computer operator's daughter whom he'd bring to work, and liked pressing red shiny things.