What is the difference between a System Thread and a User Thread?

There is a difference between user threads and system threads, and it helps to explain that difference. The system creates the system thread (no surprise there). Everything starts with the system thread – it is the first and main thread. The application usually ends when the system thread terminates. User threads are created by the application to do tasks that either cannot or should not be done by the system thread.

Applications which display user interfaces have to be careful when using threads. The system (or main) thread in these types of applications is also called the event thread – because it waits for and submits events (like clicks of the mouse and keyboard actions) to the application for processing. Allowing the event/system thread to be blocked for any period of time is generally considered bad programming practice, because it can lead to an unresponsive application or even a frozen computer. The problem of a blocked event thread is avoided by creating user threads to handle time consuming operations.

So, What are The Differences Between System and User Threads?

From the discussion above, you can probably extract this information, but we thought we would make it very clear. System threads are the main threads used in an application, whereas user threads are created to handle different tasks as they come to the application.

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