Welcome to this conference!

Sep 16 17:59 UTC 2006

Welcome to the systems and programming conference!

The focus of this conference is on operating systems and programming of all
sorts.  This includes the systems themselves: things like Unix in all of its
incarnations, Plan 9, VMS, the Macintosh, Microsoft Windows, real time and
embedded systems, Mainframes and others; are all up for discussion.
Administration, installation and configuration, implementation, standards,
programming interfaces, major applications, history and use are all
encouraged topics for debate and study.

But so are languages such as C, C++, Ada, C#, Java, Pascal, Bliss, FORTRAN,
scripting languages such as the Unix shell languages and Ruby, Python, Perl
and Tcl/Tk, and other languages that are encountered from time to time.  Do
you want to know about LISP environments under VM/CMS and portability to
Windows, Solaris and FreeBSD?  Graphics libraries that sit on top of X11 or
an abstracted frame buffer device?  Ask here.  Do you want to know more
about different programming paradigms?  Do you come from an object-oriented
background but want to know more about functional programming?  Do you have
a question about a conflict between the C and C++ standards?  Do you want to
know how threads work in Java or C on POSIX environments, or want to debate
the relative advantages and disadvantages of CSP-style concurrency over
co-routine based threading models with explicit synchronization primitives?
How about a critique of the aesthetics of a certain programming style?  Here
is your starting point.  Libraries, language standards and implementations,
compilers, interpreters and more are fine topics here.

Also valid are discussions of presentation-based markup languages or data
representation languages like XML, HTML, ASN.1, troff and nroff, TeX and
LaTeX and others.  Web technologies and how these fit together are allowed,
though these topics may find a better home in the web conference.

And don't forget the protocols that tie everything together.  Do you have a
question about sockets or Internet addressing?  How about DECnet and how to
implement scalable link-state routing protocols in Macro-32?  Do you want to
know about the networking libraries layered on top of Plan 9's filesystem
abstraction for IPC endpoints, or are you looking for general tips for
application protocol implementation?  Or discussion of how synchronization
is implemented across coarse-grained parallel processors communicating via a
network?  Search for an existing thread or enter a new one.

General programming questions and techniques are also topics for discussion
here.  Some things are universal, no matter what system or language you are
working in: algorithms and data structures are generally abstract enough to
transcend specific environments.  And things like testing and documentation,
always good ideas, may depend on the environment but are still basic
concepts.

And don't forget hardware.  There's always hardware.  How can mutual
exclusion be implemented on multi-processor shared memory MIPS systems, or
how does the PCI bus work?  There may be an item.  If there isn't, enter
one.

It's all fair game, whether you want to know how some assembler construction
works on a specific hardware/software platform, or have a question about a
programming language or operating system standard.   The discussions can get
technical, so be forewarned, but there's plenty of room for beginner
questions, too.

There's an exciting world of programming and learning out there.  This is
grex's window into that world.