Microsoft Research: A fork() in the road

Here's a research paper from Andrew Baumann, Jonathan Appavoo, Orran Krieger, and Timothy Roscoe, published on the Microsoft Research site, arguing that the fork() system call is a fundamental design mistake. "As the designers and implementers of operating systems, we should acknowledge that fork’s continued existence as a first-class OS primitive holds back systems research, and deprecate it. As educators, we should teach fork as a historical artifact, and not the first process creation mechanism students encounter." The discussion of better alternatives is limited, though.

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