Questions tagged [terminology]
Questions about the definition of software-engineering terms, and about the right terms to use to refer to commonly known concepts, practices or patterns related to software and systems development life cycle. Using the right terms correctly is a core practice of the scientific and engineering reasoning.
780 questions
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Term for time spent to "tame" (adopt) new software, including setup and learning? [closed]
I am writing a review of a small browser extension which is useful. But its benefit comes with considerable costs, which are non-monetary. I would like to express that the sum of time needed to "...
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Terminology for a case where the same algorithm produces different results during tests?
I'm testing writing 10 MB of data to a server.
The expected result echoed back is 10485760 bytes.
160 writes of 65336 bytes.
Approximately 1 of 5 tests I get back 10420224 bytes in the test. 65536 ...
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Can a language be sound if it doesn't promise safety?
It is said that C's type system is unsound, which means that it has "false negatives", it tells the programmer everything is fine, but then the code fails at runtime. for example, "the ...
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"dimension" vs "extent", "axis" vs "dimension" - when should I use which term?
I'm defining a small API involving both uni-dimensional and multi-dimensional data. In addition to representing the data itself, I also have function/methods/operators for creating a new multi-...
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Is a "dynamically-linked executable" ever referred to as that?
Example
When I run file on android-studio/bin/studio, I see:
android-studio/bin/studio: ELF 64-bit LSB pie executable, x86-64, version 1 (SYSV), dynamically linked, interpreter /lib64/ld-linux-x86-64....
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What is the term for a integer variable containing bit fields?
If I have a variable that is intended to to be used with bitmasks, to
retrieve values, i.e. bit fields and flags, what is the academic term
for such a variable?
If the (bit) fields are a analogous to ...
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How does one concisely differentiate between a DNS-to-IP lookup and reverse ordering of TLD > domain > subdomain relationships?
Question, Rationale, and Context
Commonly, in AOSP package names, [2] and always, in Flatpak package names [4] (even some WinGet ones, too), [1] DNS is utilised as the naming scheme, yet is reversed ...
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What is "vibe coding" and what are the strong points of this methodology?
A topic that recently started appearing on my socials in programming-related circles was "vibe coding". Based on the context, it appeared to be some sort of emergent methodology to write ...
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Using "iff" in documentation [closed]
Is the term "iff" (as an abbreviation in "If and only if") commonly understood, when used in software documentation? I thought so, but recently a colleague had not heard about it ...
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What is the relationship between the terms "association", "aggregation", and "composition"?
I try to brush up on my technical interview skills as I plan to seek a better offer
I don't recall being ever asked that really, but I still want to clear up any confusion. What is association, ...
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Can DAO parse local files?
We need to retrieve data in the form of entities
We have DAOs that hit a DB
But sometimes we need to parse (local) XMLs to retrieve essentially the same entities
Should we have a separate type for ...
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What to call a test that consists of running a program with only logging?
To test that your program deletes the correct files, you run it first in a logging-only mode (by commenting-out delete lines or overriding your delete method to be a logging method).
for file_path in ...
user224123
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Immutability across programming languages
I'm quite confused about the concept of mutability (or mutation?), especially across different languages. In a language like Python:
x = 10
x = 20
I believe this is called shadowing (or rebinding) ...
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What is a log and what is a trace? [closed]
The words "log" and "trace" are used regularly for describing information, written to an external file during execution of a program, but is there a fix and firm definition?
Some ...
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If class B extends A, can we say that B depends on A?
Let's say we have 2 (Java) classes:
class A {}
class B extends A {}
To me, saying B extends A and B is dependent on A are both true (but not equivalent) in this situation. My colleague, OTOH, says ...
