WhatIs

/si-stəm/

n. 1. The supervisor program or OS on a computer.

2. The entire computer system, including input/output devices, the supervisor program or OS, and possibly other software.

3. Any large-scale program.

4. Any method or algorithm.

5. System hacker: one who hacks the system (in senses 1 and 2 only; for sense 3 one mentions the particular program: e.g., LISP hacker)

/sis-äp/

n. [esp. in the BBS world] The operator (and usually the owner) of a bulletin-board system. A common neophyte mistake on FidoNet is to address a message to sysop in an international echo, thus sending it to hundreds of sysops around the world.

/sis-əd-min/

n. Common contraction of system admin; see admin.

/sis-frȯg/

[the PLATO system]

n. Playful variant of sysprog, which is in turn short for systems programmer.

/sin-tak-tik shu-gər/

[coined by Peter Landin]

n. Features added to a language or other formalism to make it 'sweeter' for humans, that do not affect the expressiveness of the formalism (compare chrome). Used esp. when there is an obvious and trivial translation of the 'sugar' feature into other constructs already present in the notation. C's 'a[i]' notation is syntactic sugar for '*(a + i)'. "Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon." -- Alan Perlis

I/O stands for Input/Output and refers to the communication between a computer system and the outside world, or between different parts of a computer. It represents any operation, process, or device that transfers data to or from the computer. I/O plays a key role in a wide range of system components, including hardware, software, and the BIOS (Basic Input/Output System). Here's an overview of what I/O entails:

/siŋk/

(var. synch) n., vi. 1. To synchronize, to bring into synchronization.

2. [techspeak] To force all pending I/O to the disk; see flush, sense 2.

3. More generally, to force a number of competing processes or agents to a state that would be safe if the system were to crash; thus, to checkpoint (in the database-theory sense).

/swi-zəl/

v. To convert external names, array indices, or references within a data structure into address pointers when the data structure is brought into main memory from external storage (also called pointer swizzling); this may be done for speed in chasing references or to simplify code (e.g., by turning lots of name lookups into pointer dereferences). The converse operation is sometimes termed unswizzling.

See also snap.

/swäp'd au̇t/

n. See swap. See also page out.

/swäp'd in/

n. See swap. See also page in.