Naming
96 items from gruhn/awesome-naming ★1,456
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Time travel debugging en.wikipedia.org
Stepping back in time through source code to understand execution and sometimes even to change history.
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Technical debt en.wikipedia.org
The implied future cost of shortcuts taken today, which accumulates like financial debt and must eventually be paid back — often with interest.
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Syntactic sugar en.wikipedia.org
Syntax that makes the language "sweeter" for human use. Usually a shorthand for common operations that can also be expressed in a more verbose form.
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Process starvation en.wikipedia.org
A problem where a process is perpetually denied resources to do its work.
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Canary en.wikipedia.org
A secret value placed on the stack to detect buffer overflow attacks. If it has been altered, danger is near — just like a canary in a coal mine that warns miners of toxic gas.
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Stack en.wikipedia.org
Like with a stack of pancakes, you can only add and remove items from the top of this data structure.
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Spaghetti Code en.wikipedia.org
A program with a tangled and hard-to-follow structure.
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Framework en.wikipedia.org
In software architecture (like in actual architecture), frameworks provide a basic structure to build upon, guiding and constraining further development.
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Simulated annealing en.wikipedia.org
An optimization algorithm inspired by the metallurgical process of annealing, where slowly cooling a heated material allows it to settle into a low-energy, globally optimal state.
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Sieve of Eratosthenes en.wikipedia.org
An ancient algorithm for finding all prime numbers up to a given limit. Non-primes are methodically sifted out, like unwanted material filtered through a sieve.
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Shotgun surgery en.wikipedia.org
A programming antipattern where, in a single change, you wildly add code everywhere in your codebase.
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Scrolling en.wikipedia.org
Screen content is often less like a book with discrete pages and more like a continuous roll of parchment, i.e., a scroll.
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Sandbox en.wikipedia.org
A safe and isolated environment to test unverified programs that may contain malicious code.
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Safari en.wikipedia.org
Web browser developed by Apple.
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Queue en.wikipedia.org
In this data structure, items are always added at the end and removed at the front as if the items were waiting in line.
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Pumping lemma en.wikipedia.org
The fact that in some formal languages any sufficiently long string can be pumped with repetitions of its substring and the result stays in the same formal language.
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Toast notification en.wikipedia.org
A small message that briefly pops up at the edge of the screen and then disappears on its own, just like toast from a toaster.
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Phoning home en.wikipedia.org
When a system (e.g. stolen computer) secretly reports back to a third party other than the current possessor. The name is a reference to the movie E.T.
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Phishing en.wikipedia.org
Refers to the use of lures to "fish" for sensitive information.
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Oracle en.wikipedia.org
A black box that magically gives answers even to undecidable questions like the halting problem.
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a11y, i18n, k8s, ... en.wikipedia.org
Abbreviating long words by keeping the first and last letter and writing the number of omitted letters in between.
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Magic en.wikipedia.org
A magic program/piece of code is doing its job, but nobody knows how. Like in reality, magic doesn't actually exist. Once you understand it, it's not magic anymore.
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camelCase, snake_case, kebab-case en.wikipedia.org
Different case styles where the name illustrates its appearance.
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Lazy evaluation en.wikipedia.org
An evaluation strategy which suspends evaluation until it's absolutely necessary and then never does it again.
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Honeypot en.wikipedia.org
Part of a system meant to look like an attractive target but actually helps detect and deflect attackers.
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Hill climbing en.wikipedia.org
Starting somewhere in the hilly "landscape" of solutions, you go in the direction of steepest ascent until reaching the top of a hill. You might miss higher hills, though.
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Heisenbug en.wikipedia.org
A bug that seems to disappear or change when one tries to study it. It's a pun on Werner Heisenberg, who discovered that the act of observing quantum systems inevitably alters their state.
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Heartbeat en.wikipedia.org
A periodic signal a system sends to confirm it is still alive and functioning, just like a pulse.
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Hamburger button en.wikipedia.org
A button to toggle a menu. The associated icon resembles a hamburger.
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Hallucination en.wikipedia.org
A confident response by an AI that does not seem to be justified by its training data.
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Greedy algorithm en.wikipedia.org
An algorithm that finds a solution by always picking the currently best-looking option without thinking too much about past and future decisions.
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Great Firewall of China en.wikipedia.org
Chinas controversial internet censorship system and a reference to the Great Wall of China.
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Gradient descent en.wikipedia.org
Minimizing a cost function by iteratively computing the gradient and moving in the direction of steepest descent.
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God object en.wikipedia.org
An anti-pattern where a single object knows too much or does too much. Like a god, it is omniscient and omnipotent.
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Glue Code en.wikipedia.org
Jenga and LEGO bricks don't share the same interface, but you can always glue them together.
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Gift wrapping algorithm en.wikipedia.org
An algorithm for constructing the smallest shape that wraps a collection of points.
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Promise en.wikipedia.org
A representation of a result that is available in the future, unless there are errors. Like in reality, promises are broken sometimes.
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fold en.wikipedia.org
Like a blanket being folded up, this function iterates a collection and in each step combines the current item with everything that has already been folded.
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Firmware en.wikipedia.org
The ware between software and hardware.
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Facade en.wikipedia.org
Analogous to a facade in architecture, a facade is an object that serves as a front-facing interface masking more complex underlying structure.
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Easter egg en.wikipedia.org
A hidden feature, especially in video games, in reference to the Easter egg hunt.
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Dropout en.wikipedia.org
Randomly disabling neurons during training to prevent overfitting. Like a sports team that improves by practicing with random members absent.
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Desktop en.wikipedia.org
The metaphorical top of the user's desk, upon which objects such as documents and folders of documents can be placed.
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Decorator en.wikipedia.org
Adds new responsibilities to an object by wrapping it in a layer of additional behavior, just as you can decorate a room without changing its walls.
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Decision boundary en.wikipedia.org
A boundary dividing the space of possible data points. Here you decide, everything on this side is SPAM, everything on that side is not.
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Confusion matrix en.wikipedia.org
A tabular summary of a classifier's "confusion", i.e., how often it thought to make correct predictions when it actually didn't.
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Computer virus en.wikipedia.org
A computer program that self-replicates by infecting other computer programs, similar to the behavior of biological viruses.
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Code golf en.wikipedia.org
Writing a program in as few characters as possible. Just like how Golf players try to win in the fewest club strokes.
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Clique problem en.wikipedia.org
The problem of finding groups of mutual friends in a network of people with friendship relations. Or more generally, finding complete subgraphs.
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Clipboard en.wikipedia.org
Where you temporarily put files you are working with (i.e. the copy & paste buffer).
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