The connection to demons for the daemon spelling is well and good (speaking very loosely about "good" here).
It is the reverse that concerns me, slipping demons into the job of computer program daemons.
I'll attempt to be less "incomplete."
(I'll, sadly, never be truly complete.)
My years of computer reading lead me to doubt that "demon" is common computer usage. My memory is that any time I've read the term in a computer book, the spelling has been "daemon". The term refers to the utilities running in the background, generally not the stuff users see like email client programs or the browser with which they gaze at WotD on the Internet.
If a person uses the daemon spelling to refer to minions of the occult, it's no skin off my nose. My concern was the definition's suggestion that common usage in computer texts included the demon spelling. I do not feel that assertion is true.
According to
Wikipedia, the Greek
daimon wasn't necessarily malevolent.
The helpful daemon of computer use would seem to stem from Hesiod in
Theogony "...they remain invisible, known only by their acts" which is quoted in the second Wikipedia link in the preceding paragraph. While a computer virus might qualify as both a daemon and demonic (negative connotation), that really isn't the sense of use for
daemon in computer discussions. Daemons are useful. They are background code doing the grunt work of keeping things running.
I did find an online reference to the spelling "demon" as a computer term
here. The author, Margaret Rouse, cites
Eric Raymond as using the term. But his spelling is "daemon" not "demon." Raymond is a well known programmer and hacker (with the positive sense of that word). Eric Raymond has written gpsd, a daemon for handling the connection of a GPS receiver to a computer. The daemon doesn't do the mapping of your trip, but makes the GPS data available for mapping programs that a user looks at. The user needs the daemon to do its work, but does not typically use it directly.
My association of meaning with "demon" has generally negative feelings. I see demons as the kind of being associated with Christian religious descriptions of Hell, Satan, etc. I would just as soon keep such beings out of my computers, thanks.
Because I'm concerned most WotD readers have by now gone away for their nap, I'll finish here...still incomplete.
Words are a game. Sometimes I play alone, but I encourage YOU to play, too.