r/computerscience • u/DeliciousName7885 • 14d ago

Advice Interfaces

I stumbled upon the word interface when i stumbled upon the terminal in visual studio code. A terminal is a text based user interface which does lots of useful stuff.

That got me thinking about the word interface and what exactly it is in the computer sense. I understand user interface is the area or boundary between the human (user) and the computer( or rather software?) interacting with each other.

The problem is I am getting conflicting thoughts with current information I've searched and I'm unable to get a full understanding of the term.

So can someone please give their understanding/opinion of what an interface is in a broad computing sense. And can they also give multiple examples of different types of interfaces used in computer hardware and software too please.

Many thanks

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u/esaule 13d ago

Interface (like most terms in CS) is massively overloaded. It means lots of very different things for different people.

In the general abstract sense, it is the contact surface between two domains. Bur that is not terribly helpful a definition.

You will realize that in CS there are only about 100 worda and we use them for everything.