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by doliveira 2224 days ago
That sounds like a pretty useless definition and needlessly confusing, because systems programming have always meant something closer to the metal. System as in Operating System. Sounds like Go people decided to repurpose the term for whatever reason.

If Kubernetes were written in JavaScript would you call it a systems programming language as well?
1 comments
_bxg1 2224 days ago
It wouldn't be written in JavaScript because JavaScript wouldn't serve a systems use-case very effectively. That's exactly my point.

Assuming Microsoft isn't talking about solely using Rust in Windows The Operating System and Linux The Operating System, they agree with my definition.

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doliveira 2224 days ago
Kubernetes could have been written in Typescript, for instance. Pulumi is for writing infrastructure as code in Typescript. Is Javascript a systems language, them?

Keyword being "closer" to the operating system, of course it doesn't mean just syscalls and Assembly. If you define "system" in "systems programming" in this broad sense of "something that other things call" you dilute the meaning of the term. Any program becomes "systems programming" then.

I'm sure that most people didn't use the term in this sense before Go's creators did and till this day I see only the Go community re-purposing the expression. I'd be happy to be proven wrong, though.

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