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What is the origin of “daemon” with regards to computing? (2011)
- photochemsyn 5y agoInteresting addendum on the difference between kernel-space daemons and user-space daemons: https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/266434/are-kernel-threads-processes-and-daemons https://unix.stackexchange.com/questions/266434/are-kernel-t...
- nanna 5y agoNote the demon of the Maxwell demon was actually William Thompson's (Lord Kelvin) term. Maxwell himself used valve and doorkeeper.
- criticaltinker 5y agoInteresting! Now what is the correct pronunciation… Day-muhn? My colleagues all seem to say it differently, and I’ve always been curious which one of us sounds the most foolish.
- cortesoft 5y agoThat is how I have always said it and heard it said
- staunch 5y agoI say day-mon because it's less alarming for non-technical people and less ambiguous for technical people. But, in accord with the robustness principle, I'm happy to accept any pronunciation.
- mindcrime 5y agoI say day-mon because it's less alarming for non-technical people and less ambiguous for technical people. Same. Even though it's probably technically incorrect in some pedantic sense, this pronunciation just makes more sense to me.
- lnx01 5y agoTo me it's daemon as in encyclopaedia, or paediatric
- Cerium 5y agoAccording to the dictionary deamon and demon are the same word with the former an archaic spelling. How do you say the latter?
- melissalobos 5y ago> deamon Is that a typo? If not then I see how those would be pronounced the same, but daemon in American English would usually be pronounced "Day-mon". This also helps to distinguish between the long running process and an evil entity, which is good when talking to less technically minded folks.
- assbuttbuttass 5y agoAccording to Wikipedia it can be either dee-mun (demon) or day-mun I've heard both in my personal life from different people https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(computing) https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_(computing)
- brigandish 5y agoWikipedia is an encyclopaedia, the answer is closer than you think ;) Whoever it was that decided “simplified” spellings were an improvement didn’t take into account how difficult they’d make pronunciation. I often hear highly educated Americans coming up with very strange ways to pronounce words, well beyond the normal realms of accent and variation, that are clearly the product of this. English spelling is bad enough but cutting out the hints to a word’s origin makes things worse, not better.
- rpdillon 5y agoIn the audiobook for Daniel Suarez's Daemon, Jeff Gurner pronounces it dee-mun. I changed the way I pronounced it after listening to that book. Most people I know pronounce it day-mun, though.
- the__alchemist 5y agoI'm listening to it now. Quite clever, and a real page-turner! The writing and story-telling are awkward, and its plot holes are numerous, but fun concept for the Hacker News crowd.
- djbusby 5y agoI pronounce like Day-Mon (those influential and wealthy Ferengi). Or De-Men when feeling less nerdy.
- bityard 5y agoExhibit A: "Daemon" is just an archaic spelling of "demon" and we already have a common pronunciation for that. Exhibit B: In Old English, "æ" was a vowel that did not survive to modern English. There is no direct equivalent sound or letter for it today. Other words that contiained æ have generally taken the long E pronunciation instead, e.g. encylopaedia -> encyclopedia and aether -> ether. So people can say what they want but in my opinion, the "dee-mon" pronunciation is the most correct. :)
- teddyh 5y agoIn European languages, æ eventually evolved into ä.
- Findecanor 5y agoGerman, Swedish, Finnish: Ä Norwegian, Danish, French, Icelandic, Faroese: Æ.
- teddyh 5y agoAccording to Wikipedia: “Ä occurs as an independent letter in Finnish, Swedish, Skolt Sami, Karelian, Estonian, Luxembourgish, North Frisian, Saterlandic, Emiliano-Romagnolo, Rotuman, Slovak, Tatar, Gagauz, German, and Turkmen” Æ is, according to Wikipedia, used in Latin, Icelandic, Danish, Norwegian, Faroese, Ossetic, Kawésqar, and Yaghan. (It is not used in French or English except in loanwords from Latin.)
- hunter2_ 5y agoWhile it's true that today we would pronounce de- and dae- each as /dee/ without differentiation, TFA points out an interesting notion: > By the late 16th century, the general supernatural meaning was being distinguished with the spelling daemon, while the evil meaning remained with demon. Given that both spellings were used simultaneously back then for the goal of differentiation that transcends mere archaic-vs-modern, I have to wonder if there was verbal differentiation accompanying it as well. I suppose this depends on a more precise estimate of æ's deprecation through the transition from Old to Middle to Early Modern to Modern English (specifically, whether its original /æ/ [0] sound persisted into Early Modern or was already /ee/ by then). [0] Which, confusingly, has several possibilities [1]. Since we're talking about the 16th century though, we might go with the sound it also represents in IPA, as in ash, fan, happy, last, etc. although I can't say I've ever heard anyone utter /dam ən/... [1] https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/70927/how-is-%C3%A6-supposed-to-be-pronounced https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/70927/how-is-%C3...
- raddan 5y agoIn the interest of starting a proper flamewar, I propose that we also discuss the pronunciation of 'sudo' and 'sysctl'.
- gmfawcett 5y ago> the pronunciation of 'sudo' SOO-dough (like pseudo) > and 'sysctl'. see-ISSSSS-cuttle (obviously!!)
- hkt 5y agosoo-doo Siss cee tee ell I will die on this hill
- hunter2_ 5y agoI'm guessing you're also a my-ess-queue-el person, then? Lack of vowels means discrete pronunciation of letters? How about the ctrl key or fn key?
- hkt 5y agoOddly, no strong feelings about those, but I am a my-ess-queue-el person. I can't claim to be consistent, but filling in vowel-less acronyms feels wrong. I think that's the difference - ctrl and fn are abbreviations, not acronyms. That might be the first time I've expressed it that way, actually. TIL, chiefly about my own thought processes.
- hunter2_ 5y agoI do believe SQL is not an acronym, but an initialism, precisely when it's spoken as you say it: initials rather than a word. It's when the string of letters is pronounced as a word that "acronym" is accurate. So SQL is either, and thus both... But yeah, the filling in is odd unless, as in the case of ctl/ctrl, knowledge of the original guides us into lossless compression.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- _moof 5y agoIt's pronounced "GIF." In seriousness it's pronounced DEE-mon, but you'll never get consensus on this, so best just to say it the way you want to say it and leave it alone when someone else says it differently.
- wrycoder 5y agoDAEMON (day'mun, dee'mun) [archaic form of "demon", which has slightly different connotations (q.v.)] n. A program which is not invoked explicitly, but which lays dormant waiting for some condition(s) to occur. The idea is that the perpetrator of the condition need not be aware that a daemon is lurking (though often a program will commit an action only because it knows that it will implicitly invoke a daemon). For example, writing a file on the lpt spooler's directory will invoke the spooling daemon, which prints the file. The advantage is that programs which want (in this example) files printed need not compete for access to the lpt. They simply enter their implicit requests and let the daemon decide what to do with them. Daemons are usually spawned automatically by the system, and may either live forever or be regenerated at intervals. Usage: DAEMON and DEMON (q.v.) are often used interchangeably, but seem to have distinct connotations. DAEMON was introduced to computing by CTSS people (who pronounced it dee'mon) and used it to refer to what is now called a DRAGON or PHANTOM (q.v.). The meaning and pronunciation have drifted, and we think this glossary reflects current usage. https://www.dourish.com/goodies/jargon.html https://www.dourish.com/goodies/jargon.html
- lordleft 5y agoDoes anyone else always think of Socrates' Daemon?
- brimble 5y agoI'd just assumed it was from that. Greek-tradition minor deities and helper spirits. Like "genius".
- keeler 5y agoYes. Socrates' daimon listened in the background and would warn or forbid him from doing certain things.
- redsh 5y agoI strongly thing about it!
- fsckboy 5y agoSocrates's demon, Descartes's demon, Laplace's demon, Maxwell's demon, and there are many more, it's a common notion
- mikece 5y agoThe story of the etymology is one thing, but the common understanding of what "daemon" is, outside of computing, speaks to the inherent volatility and evolution of meanings in the English language. If you check Webster's dictionary[1] you'll see that (1) it's merely an alternative spelling of "demon" and (2) it's primary definition is that of 'an evil spirit.' It's not until the 5th option that a reference to computing is mentioned: https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/daemon https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/daemon [1] Noah Webster created his first dictionary as a resource to use alongside the King James Bible because he had observed, in his lifetime, the drift of the meanings of words to the point that what the words meant when the KJV was written were being understood differently. His goal was for Bible scholars to have a fixed point of reference to what the meaning of words should be when reading and interpreting the Bible. We can see this in the US Constitution where the common understanding of the word "regulate" in the late 1700s means to "to make regular" -- which in modern language would be rendered as un-regulated. Reading the Interstate Commerce Clause with the understanding of the words as they were used at the time gives almost an opposite understanding to what was meant at the time.
- silicon2401 5y ago> Reading the Interstate Commerce Clause with the understanding of the words as they were used at the time gives almost an opposite understanding to what was meant at the time. I think this has a typo?
- mikece 5y agoThere's no compilre on the "reply" button and I'm a programmer... so typoes are possible. Which word(s)?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- jagged-chisel 5y ago> Reading the Interstate Commerce Clause with the understanding of the words as they were used at the time gives almost an opposite understanding to what was meant at the time. Reading it with today’s meaning might make it opposite if what was meant at the time. Or reading it with the original meaning might make it opposite of what it would mean today. But reading with the older meaning shouldn’t make it the opposite if what was meant at the (older) time.
- nomoreusernames 5y agokeep the daemons alive and keep the zombies out.
- bityard 5y agoPreviously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2691752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2691752 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16299583 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16299583
- tyingq 5y agoThere are earlier references elsewhere, but the oldest Internet RFC I could find mention of it is RFC114 (Apr 1971), a Multics related doc called "A FILE TRANSFER PROTOCOL" https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc114 https://datatracker.ietf.org/doc/html/rfc114 An excerpt: The cooperating processes may be "daemon" processes which "listen" to agreed-upon sockets, and follow the initial connection protocol much in the same way as a "logger" does. Related to MIT's "Project MAC", with the same Professor Fernando José Corbató involved as the Stack Exchange answer.
- jle17 5y agoAccording to the jargon file, ITS called daemons dragons and SAIL (whatever this is ?) called them phantoms. Add to that zombie processes on Unix and user rights angels from FreeBSD's capsicum and the fact that processes come from executable files in ELF format and have debug infos in DWARF and it is quite the fantasy menagerie. I suggest Kobold for whatever kind of process we need to name next.
- polynomial 5y ago> SAIL (whatever this is ?) Science and Artificial Intelligence Laboratory
- cstross 5y agoWrong: it's the Stanford Artificial Intelligence Laboratory (founded 1962 by John McCarthy -- who co-authored the document that first defined AI as a field, invented LISP, time sharing, and garbage collection, heavily influenced the design of ALGOL, and so on: one of the pioneers of computer science): https://ai.stanford.edu/ https://ai.stanford.edu/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCarthy_(computer_scientist) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_McCarthy_(computer_scient...
- b112 5y agoLISP even has its own song. https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/eternal-flame.en.html https://www.gnu.org/fun/jokes/eternal-flame.en.html
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ducttapecrown 5y agoSurely the right question to ask is what is the origin of computing with regards to the mythological tale of "daemons". The Greeks built a mechanical computer called the antikythera mechanism, and tales of clockwork automotons have existed for millenia. So my argument would be that the concept of a "daemon" doing your computational work for you entirely precedes modern computation. Edit: The second response to the stack exchange question consists of pretty much this argument, and the Wikipedia page [1] has more information! [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_%28computing%29#Etymology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daemon_%28computing%29#Etymolo...
- Melatonic 5y agoI like this version the best regardless of what the originators thought
- lioeters 5y ago> As early as Homer, Greeks were imagining robotic servants, animated statues, and even ancient versions of Artificial Intelligence, while in Indian legend, Buddha’s precious relics were defended by robot warriors copied from Greco-Roman designs for real automata. Mythic automata appear in tales about Jason and the Argonauts, Medea, Daedalus, Prometheus, and Pandora, and many of these machines are described as being built with the same materials and methods that human artisans used to make tools and statues. And, indeed, many sophisticated animated devices were actually built in antiquity, reaching a climax with the creation of a host of automata in the ancient city of learning, Alexandria, the original Silicon Valley. Gods and Robots: Myths, Machines, and Ancient Dreams of Technology - Adrienne Mayor https://classics.stanford.edu/publications/gods-and-robots-myths-machines-and-ancient-dreams-technology https://classics.stanford.edu/publications/gods-and-robots-m...
- pyinstallwoes 5y agoMy research shows that the etymology of daemon is based on the concept similar to angels and devas where there existed “messengers” of divinity/god. Which does connect similarly and semantically to background processes.
- UnpossibleJim 5y agoHuh, interesting. I always thought it was because, like me, D&D nerds were the ones in charge of naming things, so their gaming vocabulary trickled into their working vocabulary. I'm not sure if this is more or less nerdy than my believed version, TBH. EDIT: Forgot a very important word.... I need to have some caffeine =)
- ltr_ 5y agoanecdote time - Months ago this same question arose in my head reading something about graphs of cause and effects over other dimension (like time), If I remember well, they mentioned something about information pockets and how you can take advantage of them to change the course of events if you are an almighty observer, then searching about it I read something about daemons being things that changes things and move through those pockets.
- civilized 5y agoKey point from the answers: in original usage, daemons are spirits and can be good, bad, or neutral. As an illustration, "eudaimonia", good spirits, is the Greek word for happiness.
- TrispusAttucks 5y agoI always assumed it was Maxwell's demon [1]. The little hypothetical creature that exists to manage the state of a system to maintain order is a fitting description. [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_demon https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maxwell's_demon
- bee_rider 5y agoBoth of the popular stackoverflow answers seem to agree, at least to some degree. Which makes a lot of sense to me -- Maxwell's daemon lives right in the physics/information theory zone, and close enough to signal theory stuff that, while it isn't required reading, any number of engineering students might bump into it.
- smm11 5y agoSysadmin
- kazinator 5y agoOne meaning of "daemon" is that it's a supernatural being that is kind of halfway between a human and a god. Daemons often run with privilege, and so are (god-like), but are not the operating system itself (god). Daemons can do things on behalf of the human user which no program could do that the user could write and execute under his or her privilege level. Maxwell's demon is really a demon in the evil sense because it perpetrates something "wrong": it causes all the gas to move from one compartment to another, thereby wrecking god-given thermodynamics.
- mr_toad 5y ago> thereby wrecking god-given thermodynamics I once got into an argument with a creationist who insisted that evolution was impossible because it contradicted the second law of thermodynamics. I’m guessing he’d view a refrigerator as the devil’s work.
- deepzn 5y agoAs a side, always loved the hacker adoption of daemon, and usage in hacker lexicon. Also in the show Mr.Robot, I think they use it at times.
- deepzn 5y agoHere is the usage of it - https://mrrobot.fandom.com/wiki/Eps1.3_da3m0ns.mp4?li_source=LI&li_medium=wikia-rail https://mrrobot.fandom.com/wiki/Eps1.3_da3m0ns.mp4?li_source...
- Animats 5y agoUNIVAC once called background tasks "parasites". This was changed to "symbiont" for marketing reasons, and the change was visible as a paste job in the manuals.
- peter303 5y agoAmodern variant would be "microservice"
- kens 5y agoThe earliest reference to daemon in computing that I could find is from 1962 (a year before Corbato's use in the stackexchange discussion). The Daemon spacecraft computer (Data Adaptive Evaluator and Monitor) was named after the "deity of Greek mythology who served as a guardian over the lives and fortunes of men." This computer system is interesting because it proposed using a TV-type monitor to display all the significant data in the space vehicle cockpit, way back in 1962. It took 35 years for this to become a reality with the Space Shuttle's MEDS display (1998). This was published in Aviation Week: https://archive.org/details/Aviation_Week_1962-05-21/page/n38/mode/1up https://archive.org/details/Aviation_Week_1962-05-21/page/n3...
- herodoturtle 5y agoOn a somewhat related note, I distinctly recall in the mid 90s running Doom for the first time (DOS 6 I think?), and its text-based load screen that initialised everything said “refresh daemon”. At the time I thought it was something to do with refreshing the baddies in the game! ^_^
- hestefisk 5y agoI seem to recall it stems from the Ancient Greek word “eudaimonia” = good, helpful spirit. It is a core part of modern ethics (see Aristotle).
- hestefisk 5y agoAlso see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaimonia https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eudaimonia
- s1mon 5y agoDaemon is also how it's spelled in Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. I always wondered if there was some connection to its use in computing. She uses that spelling of the word to imply that the "monster" is not evil. I can't find a good source, but there are plenty of things which have similar jists to this: "A daemon was originally a spirit somewhere between gods and men. Later, with the spelling ‘demon', it acquired the meaning of a devil or evil spirit."
- ashton314 5y agoSomeone please help me finish a joke: what's the difference between a speed demon, and a speed daemon? (I've had this premise for a while, but I keep crit failing the charisma check to make a good punchline.)
- pfarrell 5y agoHow about something like a speed demon sprints while a speed daemon sprintfs
- gumby 5y agoI can confirm Corby's statement and more so: many of the daeemons running on the ITS systems had names from Zelazny's Amber. And of course the DM machine was the source of Zork.
- bspear 5y agoTwas a great sci-fi book called daemon
- dredmorbius 5y agoHorse's mouth (Fernando J. Corbato): https://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Daemon.html https://ei.cs.vt.edu/~history/Daemon.html
- ggm 5y agoAnother use is the "printers daemon" [0] which sits on the shoulder, and points out (or not) the typos as you compose the line of type. There is a rather nice door lintel at the Queensland Government Printery which has a printers daemon leering at the public as they pass. given some flexibility, you can see linkage to "bugs" in "typos" [0] https://www.timetravelclub.com.au/2015/07/devils.html https://www.timetravelclub.com.au/2015/07/devils.html
- sedatk 5y agoI wonder why the preference of the less common spelling.