> I think it would be a unfortunate for people to start redefining what "Systems Programming" means because it is vague enough now as it is Indeed. When people

> I think it would be a unfortunate for people to start redefining what "Systems Programming" means because it is vague enough now as it is Indeed. When people call something "systems programming" when it is just e.g. server programming, it feels like when you are being told that "hacker" means the same thing as "cracker" because that's what most people think it means. In my slightly angry opinion, "Systems programming" is one of those terms that are convenient because they are vague and look cool. The plural on "systems" is suspicious in itself. It's not just one system they are working on, but many. Impressive, isn't it? The funny thing is, if you look up the definition of "system": a regularly interacting or interdependent group of items forming a unified whole ... not so many people actually do that. I think programmers usually work on one thing, one component of a whole system (guess why you are part of a team?). I'm not sure about how uncommon the opposite is because I actually do that - I have worked at the driver level, OS configuration level and at the application level in order to make a product work - and I am not that much of an exceptional programmer.