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Showing posts from December, 2017

What is the difference between asynchronous and synchronous execution?

When you execute something synchronously, you wait for it to finish before moving on to another task. When you execute something asynchronously, you can move on to another task before it finishes. That being said, in the context of computers this translates into executing a process or task on another "thread." A thread is a series of commands (a block of code) that exists as a unit of work. The operating system can manage multiple threads and assign a thread a piece ("slice") of processor time before switching to another thread to give it a turn to do some work. At its core (pardon the pun), a processor can simply execute a command, it has no concept of doing two things at one time. The operating system simulates this by allocating slices of time to different threads. Now, if you introduce multiple cores/processors into the mix, then things CAN actually happen at the same time. The operating system can allocate time to one thread on the first processor, then a

The Complete Guide to Creating Symbolic Links (aka Symlinks) on Windows

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Windows 10, 8, 7, and Vista all support symbolic links—also known as symlinks—that point to a file or folder on your system. You can create them using the Command Prompt or a third-party tool called Link Shell Extension. What Are Symbolic Links? Symbolic links are basically advanced shortcuts. Create a symbolic link to an individual file or folder, and that link will appear to be the same as the file or folder to Windows—even though it’s just a link pointing at the file or folder. For example, let’s say you have a program that needs its files at C:\Program. You’d really like to store this directory at D:\Stuff, but the program  requires  that its files be at C:\Program. You could move the original directory from C:\Program to D:\Stuff, and then create a symbolic link at C:\Program pointing to D:\Stuff. When you relaunch the program, it will try to access its directory at C:\Program. Windows will automatically redirect it to D:\Stuff, and everything will just work as if it