> As the meme goes, they keep using the word "systems", I don't think it means what they think it means.
I'm pretty sure it doesn't mean what you think it means. The only title I have on my bookshelf which has "Systems Programming" in the title is System Software: An Introduction to Systems Programming. The book is about creating assemblers and compilers for a made-up architecture called SIC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIC/XE
This is neither here nor there, but the point is that a fair number of accomplished people in the field were apparently at one time less hung up about precisely what "systems programming" might mean and (this is just conjecture on my part, since honestly, who cares?) probably just used it as a contrast with applications programming.
I'm pretty sure it doesn't mean what you think it means. The only title I have on my bookshelf which has "Systems Programming" in the title is System Software: An Introduction to Systems Programming. The book is about creating assemblers and compilers for a made-up architecture called SIC: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SIC/XE
This is neither here nor there, but the point is that a fair number of accomplished people in the field were apparently at one time less hung up about precisely what "systems programming" might mean and (this is just conjecture on my part, since honestly, who cares?) probably just used it as a contrast with applications programming.