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Discussion on: Explain like I'm five. What is a process and what is thread ?

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Atanas Kostovski

I'm sure someone will explain this far better than I'll ever can. So I'll go for the shortest way I can put this :)

I think you can look at things like this:

  • Process is like this object that is scheduled for execution. It has it's own memory allocated for it, and an "scope" of it separated from other processes.
  • Thread is more like part of the process. One process can have multiple threads, but they actually have their own sequences of execution. But all threads of one process share the memory allocated for that process.

What's the main difference - threads can share memory and data, and be able to work on the same memory set, while processes are isolated.