methodology

First Come First Served

First Come First Served (FCFS) is a scheduling algorithm used in computing and operations management that processes tasks or requests in the exact order they arrive, without prioritization. It is a non-preemptive approach commonly applied in operating systems for CPU scheduling, disk I/O, and network packet handling. The method ensures fairness by treating all incoming items equally based on their arrival time.

Also known as: FCFS, First-In First-Out, FIFO, Queue-based scheduling, Order-of-arrival

🧊Why learn First Come First Served?

Developers should learn FCFS for its simplicity and fairness in scenarios where task order preservation is critical, such as in batch processing systems, print spoolers, or basic queue management. It is particularly useful in educational contexts to teach fundamental scheduling concepts and in low-complexity systems where overhead from more advanced algorithms is unnecessary. However, it can lead to poor performance in environments with varying task lengths due to the 'convoy effect'.