
So Hard as a “Server” - Bella-Xiang
https://jvns.ca/blog/2019/12/26/whats-a-server/
======
Spivak
It’s even more overloaded when you include client/server as a paradigm in
application development. Sure, the server is still a program usually listening
on a socket, dbus name or using shared memory of some sort an and responding
to requests but they’re also logically part of the same program.

tmux, evolution, mutter, urvxt, tracker, emacs, neovim, etc. are all servers
in the right context.

Then there are servers that don’t serve requests in the traditional sense.
Entities that perform batch operations by pulling data from queues, run
reports, etc. are also called servers despite not fitting the call & response
model.

~~~
Bella-Xiang
I'm a beginner for this field, so I have some questions. Is it spontaneous for
the machine/server to pull data from the queue, run reports, and so on to
perform batch operations? What is the extracted data used for? Isn't this
action responding to a request?

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tomkarho
My definition: a server is a computer that does things for other computers.

