User:Lyrithya/Why?:Fork the process

This is a fork. It's just sort of chillin', not that it has anything to do with this. Wrong kind of fork, and all.

Processes are dangerous things, man. They're so cheap, and the system is just sitting there chillin', and it seems all safe to fork them, you know? After all, you need another process to do something else. So fork the one. Whalah, magical: new process, can do whatever you want with it, right? Make your system do stuff. Useful stuff, not so useful stuff, you name it. Play a game, run a browser, or maybe run a server. Do you know how many processes the average web server has going? Some setups make a new process for each access. That's a process for every Tom, Dick and Harry connecting to the server from anywhere, and do you know how many connections the average site has going at any given time?

That's good, because I don't either.

But as for the processes, you get new ones by forking them. Take an existing one, scoop out the guts, throw them at your sister and delight in the resulting screams or something like that. Well, okay, probably not; I've never really done it myself, at least not directly, but you get the idea, right? That's how it's done. At least, I think it is.

Forking

But the question is why - why would you want to do it? Well, I really couldn't say. You're probably a totally chill dude, but that doesn't mean I can speak for you. Myself, on the other hand, I can speak for, and I can say with a fair amount of snazz that my answer is wholly and unequivocally BECAUSE. Specifically, because someone told me it was a totally bad idea and I shouldn't do it. "Don't stick the knife in the socket, son. Don't lick the flagpole. Don't fork the process. Except now that you've been told not to, you'll have to go off and do it, so I never should have put the idea in your head." And naturally he's entirely right, though I'll do him a favour and do it on my sister's computer and not his. Or mine.

And he probably meant in a loop or something, since normally forking's the thing to do, right? Recursion, perhaps. You know how recursion is, keeps going back and doing itself over and over again, sort of like some sort of really terrible lonely guy who desperately needs a girlfriend, except in this case it'd probably be a process forking itself over and over again because some really lonely guy desperately needs a girlfriend and is currently bored out of his wits. Or something like that, at least. I actually do have a girlfriend, but admitting that outright would have ruined the joke, you know? And besides, she's presently off in Italy taking a summer class on renaissance artwork, so whatev', man. Principle's the same. I'm a little bored right now.

Wait, what?

But if all the processes are just forks of other processes, where did the first one come from?