Systems programming is the discipline of writing software that interacts closely with hardware or sits underneath application code: operating systems, databases, compilers, runtimes, and network stacks. It prizes predictable performance, careful memory management, and an understanding of what the machine is actually doing. Languages like C, C++, Rust, and Golang are common choices.
References
- Career advice for young system programmers — Glauber Costa
- Ask HN: How to learn proper systems programming?
- Write your Own Virtual Machine — Justin Meiners and Ryan Pendleton — tutorial that builds a working LC-3 virtual machine in roughly 250 lines of C, covering instruction execution, memory and registers, trap routines, and I/O