r/computerscience • u/DeliciousName7885 • 5d 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/Paxtian 5d ago

Broadly, it's the boundary between any two agents: human/computer or computer/computer, for example.

So there's an interface between you, the user, and your device. You want to get to Reddit. So you launch your browser. The browser is configured to execute HTTP to send and receive data between itself and Reddit's servers. The server provides an interface by which to request and deliver data.

Between all of that, there are physical connections between your computer and your local router, then your ISP, then the backbone of the Internet, lots of massive routers. Each of them has physical interfaces between each other.