Programming Jargon Dictionary
Posted by bsstahl on 2011-06-20 and Filed Under: development
StackOverflow has a fantastic list of programming terms that have been coined by the development community recently. Some of the best, most appropriate terms are documented below.
Automanually
Used to refer to a batch job or application that should be scheduled or triggered automatically, but due to unspecified reasons requires manual intervention every time. (not the same as automagically)
Boolean Zen
The proper practice of using boolean expressions directly without testing for equality to true or false.
Common Law Feature
A bug in the application that has existed for so long that it is now part of the expected functionality.
Disaster Driven Development
When Your PMs and salesmen promised that You will build a "space shuttle" in one month.
Egyptian Brackets
Describes the god-awful c-style where curly-braces are not aligned.
Heisenbug
An oldie, but still valuable…describes a bug that disappears or changes when put under scrutiny.
Higgs-Bugson
A hypothetical bug predicted to exist based on a small number of possibly related event log entries and other anecdotal evidence.
Hindenbug
A catastrophic, data destroying bug.
Jimmy
A non-inclusive name for a low-level developer (n00b). (note: all non-inclusive language is inappropriate and should not be used)
Nopping
From the assembler instruction NOP (no operation). Similar to nap but doesn’t imply sleep, just zoning out.
Object Oriented Pasta
Used to describe spaghetti code wrapped in classes to make it look like an object.
Perl-Grade Obfuscation
The highest level of code obfuscation possible. Better than passing code through a 1-way hash function.
Refuctoring
The process of taking a well-designed piece of code and, through a series of small, reversible changes, making it completely unmaintainable by anyone except yourself.
Rubberducking
The process of talking your own way through a problem, as if talking to a rubber duck.
Scar Tissue
Any code that is commented out but still included in the current and/or checked-in version.
Smurf Naming Convention
When almost every class has the same prefix. IE, when a user clicks on the button, a SmurfAccountView passes a SmurfAccountDTO to the SmurfAccountController. The SmurfID is used to fetch a SmurfOrderHistory which is passed to the SmurfHistoryMatch…
Stringly Typed
One of the antitheses of strongly typed. It describes an implementation that uses strings where more strongly-type options are available.
Try, Catch, Forget
An empty catch block, no tracing, not even a comment. No attempt to resolve the error and of course the catch block is not at all specific on the exception type.
Barry S. Stahl (he/him/his) - Barry is a .NET Software Engineer who has been creating business solutions for enterprise customers since the mid 1980s. Barry is also an Election Integrity Activist, baseball and hockey fan, husband of one genius and father of another, and a 40 year resident of Phoenix Arizona USA. When Barry is not traveling around the world to speak at Conferences, Code Camps and User Groups or to participate in GiveCamp events, he spends his days as a Solution Architect for Carvana in Tempe AZ and his nights thinking about the next AZGiveCamp event where software creators come together to build websites and apps for some great non-profit organizations.