> is a kind of emulator From what I've read I get the impression that for a while in the 1960s and 1970s, the terms "process" and "virtual machine" were interc

> is a kind of emulator From what I've read I get the impression that for a while in the 1960s and 1970s, the terms "process" and "virtual machine" were interchangeable. I don't feel that was a mistake, and today we make an arbitrary excessive distinction between them. They are the same concept, just implemented in a slightly different way. From both the program's and the programmer's perspective, a process under a Unix-like is a virtual machine. A very nice virtual machine, too. It has approximately infinite memory, can operate in parallel with an arbitrary number of parallel machines, and the kernel API can be thought of as an enriched and very sophisticated instruction set.