Abstract
e’ve now looked extensively at what it is that developers work on when they’re working on building software, both in terms of the code itself and its various tests, which may also take up a significant portion of a developer’s attention. Armed with all of this information, you would be forgiven for expecting that you’d now be fully conversant in developer-speak. You’d also most likely be wrong. Ask any of your technical colleagues what they’re working on today, and tell them not to translate it into non-tech language, and you will almost certainly be inundated by a torrent of jargon that leaves you mystified. It turns out there’s an entire language that coders use, and each new technology and tool adds a splurge of new terminology.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution.
Buying options
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Learn about institutional subscriptionsNotes
- 1.
Although, to be fair, it has been pointed out to me that I can be pretty slow to catch on, particularly in the mornings. And on Mondays. And Fridays. And for a few hours after lunch. So that might be the real source of the bewilderment.
- 2.
It’s not just me, right?
- 3.
It’s not actually quite as simple as each connected device needing its own IP—often you’ll have all the devices on some local network (like a business’s LAN all sharing the same single public IP address), and then they’ll each have a private IP on the network to distinguish them, kinda like a bunch of people in a building all sharing the address of that building. But equally, some devices need more than one IP if they have more than one way of connecting to the Internet. So it kinda balances out, and the number of required IP addresses and the population of the world are at similar orders of magnitude.
- 4.
Don’t ask about IPv5.
- 5.
I know: no one calls their friends any more, but pretend you do for the sake of this analogy.
- 6.
It’s not actually the only protocol involved in sending and receiving email—there’s also stuff like POP3 and IMAP, but let’s not get bogged down in minutiae.
- 7.
Many people read their email in a browser, and that means their email client—the website they read the email on—is on the Web. But the emails themselves don’t go via the Web as they’re sent and received—they travel via SMTP, which is not part of the Web.
- 8.
Things have changed since the Web was first introduced. For example, you often don’t need to specify the “www” bit because it’s assumed you want to deal with Web stuff without you having to say so explicitly. Equally, often you’re not asking for a specific file like “test.html,” but rather you’re asking for a page that the server will put together for you specially, rather than simply digging out a pre-existing file with a name you’ve specified.
- 9.
Some browsers are better at staying up to date with the latest conventions than others. Internet Explorer has a terrible track record, which is why you’ll so often hear developers being mean about it.
- 10.
There’s also something called ECMAScript, which is sort-of-but-not-quite the same thing as JavaScript. Google it if you’re interested, otherwise if you want to treat the two terms as synonymous you won’t go far wrong.
- 11.
Even though the Web gets a capital “W,” websites and web apps don’t normally. Such is the inconsistent nature of techspeak.
- 12.
If you put together 4 bits—half a byte—you get something called a “nibble,” which I guess someone somewhere once thought was funny.
- 13.
Apress 2016.
- 14.
Bruce Schneier writes very well about this stuff.
- 15.
Almost. Sometimes two inputs will cause the same output, something known as a hash collision.
- 16.
You may be wondering, if I need to set up a secret code to talk securely with a stranger, but an eavesdropper could hear anything I say, how on earth do I establish a secret code with them in the first place? The process that makes this possible involves lots of cunning math that I’m too dim to understand. However I don’t need to. There’s a fantastic video by Art Of The Problem that explains the theory behind it, a process called Diffie-Hellman Key Exchange, through an analogy with mixing paint: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QnD2c4Xovk .
- 17.
Secure Socket Layer has technically been superceded by “Transport Layer Security,” but everyone already knew what SSL meant so they didn’t really bother updating the acronym. So when people say “SSL” they normally actually mean TLS.
- 18.
- 19.
There’s more to the inner-platform effect. If you’re curious I encourage you to read up on it at http://thedailywtf.com/articles/The_Inner-Platform_Effect .
- 20.
This particularly applies to languages that are “interpreted” (i.e., the source code has to be on the computer that runs the software, because the source code is only read when the software runs) rather than languages that are “compiled” (i.e., the source code is used to generate a big ball of ones-and-zeroes called an executable, which can be understood by a computer but not a human, meaning that only the executable rather than the source code needed to compile it needs to ever leave the computer that the software was originally written on).
- 21.
Because, so the claim goes, copyright is normally used to restrict freedom, whereas copyleft is about, in a twisted sense, ensuring freedom, so it’s the “mirror image” of copyright. It’s a pretty terrible play on words.
- 22.
There are a few sources of confusion. For one thing, different GPL licenses are differently structured, so that for some (such as the GPLv2) you have to actually distribute the software for the source distribution rule to kick in, whereas for others (such as the AGPLv3) even if your software stays on your servers, if other people interact with your software they must be given access to your source code. For another, it’s not always obvious whether a piece of software that relies on a particular open source package is “based on” that package, or is a “derivative work,” and those are the terms used in the license. But most importantly, reading and interpreting software licenses is boring as all hell, and most people only ever skim the legalese, so don’t fully understand its implications.
- 23.
A good place to start is www.gnu.org ’. GPL stands for GNU public license. Just don’t ask what GNU stands for, it’ll make your head hurt.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Rights and permissions
Copyright information
© 2017 Patrick Gleeson
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Gleeson, P. (2017). Taking the “Arg” out of Jargon. In: Working with Coders. Apress, Berkeley, CA. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-2701-5_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4842-2701-5_6
Published:
Publisher Name: Apress, Berkeley, CA
Print ISBN: 978-1-4842-2700-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-4842-2701-5
eBook Packages: Business and ManagementApress Access BooksBusiness and Management (R0)