Software: vocabulary and definitions (314 words)

This page gathers the 314 dictionary entries belonging to the domain “Software”, as labelled by Wiktionary. Each word leads to its full entry: definitions, etymology, pronunciation, examples. Page 1 of 3: from “A/B testing” to “encapsulate”.

A/B testing noun The use of a randomized experiment with two variants (termed A and B) which differ in a single particular.
abandonware noun A software product that is no longer updated or maintained, or whose copyright is no longer defended or which is no longer marketed even by…
abstract factory pattern noun A creational design pattern that decouples the object creation by providing a group of individual factories by defining an abstract factory…
access specifier noun A keyword applied to a variable, method, etc. that indicates which other parts of the program are permitted to access it.
activate verb To remove the limitations of demoware by providing a license; to unlock.
actor noun The entity that performs a role (in use case analysis).
add on noun A software extension or hardware peripheral that provides additional functions or customization for a core application or system.
adobe noun Any file, document or program that is associated with Adobe Inc.
agent-oriented adj Of or pertaining to a programming paradigm where the construction of the software is centered on the concept of externally specified…
agile noun Agile software development.
alpha noun The first versions of a program, usually only available to the developer, and only tested by the developer.
alpha testing noun A process where a software application approaching full functionality is made available to a group of sophisticated users.
anti-feature noun Functionality originally intended as a feature, but perceived as a bug, annoyance, or infringement of freedoms by some or even most users.
antitracking adj Of a system or application, preventing the gathering or collecting of personal data or information.
application bundle noun A package format, often a directory with a specific structure, containing all the files and resources necessary for a program to run.
artifact noun Ellipsis of build artifact.
asset noun Any component, model, process or framework of value that can be leveraged or reused.
at noun Initialism of assistive technology.
attribute-oriented adj Of or pertaining to a technique that adds metadata, or attributes, to program code, which affect the system's semantics.
backing bean noun A bean managed by JavaServer Faces that acts as a server-side data model and controller for a specific UI view (page).
backup copy noun A duplicate instance of an application, datafile, server or system created as a means to restore the original data in case it is deleted…
backward compatibility noun The capability of an electronic device, a piece of software, etc., to interoperate with older systems; (countable) an instance of this.
barnacle noun A deprecated or obsolete file, image or other artifact that remains with a project even though it is no longer needed.
batteries-included adj Including all possible components required for full usability.
bebugging noun A technique for measuring test coverage by adding bugs to a program and tasking the tester with finding them.
benevolent dictator for life noun The leader of an open-source software project, typically project founders, who retains the final say in disputes or arguments within the…
beta testing noun A form of software testing, after the alpha testing stage, involving a limited audience of external users.
big agile noun The application of agile principles and practices to larger, complex projects, often with teams working from multiple locations.
big bang testing noun A form of integration testing in which the individual modules are linked together and tested as a whole, without first being tested…
bikeshed verb To discuss a minor detail rather than focusing on more important issues.
black-box testing noun Any form of testing in which knowledge of the internals of the system being tested are unknown and unimportant.
blue-green deployment noun The technique of rolling out changes to a system by alternating the production and staging servers each time. One server is referred to as…
bridge pattern noun A structural design pattern that decouples an abstraction from its implementation so that the two can vary independently.
brownfield adj Being a development that has to integrate with legacy systems.
builder pattern noun A creational design pattern that intends to abstract steps of construction of objects so that different implementations of these steps can…
burndown noun In agile software development, a chart showing how much work remains to be completed.
business object noun An entity, in a multitiered software application, that represents a particular entity within the business, such as a customer or an order.
buzzword compliance noun The practice of ensuring that a product supports a set of features considered important for marketing, regardless of whether they are…
cab noun Clipping of cabinet file (“a compressed library archive file”).
cadence noun The frequency of regular product releases.
calendar versioning noun A versioning scheme where each release number is based on the build date, usually in the ISO 8601 format, allowing for easy sorting.
canary verb To test a software change by rolling out to a small set of machines or users before making it available to all.
canary release noun A deployment strategy performed in order to reduce the risk of introducing a new software version in production by slowly rolling out the…
CD noun Initialism of continuous delivery/deployment.
cdi noun Initialism of context(s) and dependency injection.
check in verb To integrate new revisions into the public or master version of a file in a version control system.
cherry-pick verb In source control, to commit selected changes from one branch to another.
class adapter pattern noun An adapter pattern where the adapter is created by implementing or inheriting both the interface that is expected and the interface that is…
class diagram noun A type of static structure diagram that describes the structure of a system by showing the system's classes, their attributes, and the…
clean code noun Non-redundant software code comprising of focused task-specific modules and functions, written in a systematic manner so that another coder…
cleanroom noun Being or relating to a software development process intended to produce software with a certifiable level of reliability.
clickwrap license noun A license which is implicitly agreed to when the user clicks on a particular user interface element, such as a button or link.
closed source adj Whose constituent makeup, or source code, is not made publicly available.
code review noun The practice, or an instance, of identifying and verifying the choice of algorithms, coding styles and compliance with the software design.
code rot noun Synonym of bit rot: the development of bugs and incompatibilities of software due to changes in its environment, etc.
cohesion noun Degree to which functionally related elements in a system belong together.
comment verb To insert comments into (source code).
compartmentalization noun The act of dividing complex code into libraries with common functionality to help make the process of programming more manageable and…
compiler noun A computer program that transforms source code into object code.
component-oriented adj Of or pertaining to a software development approach that focuses on building components that are loosely-coupled and reusable.
compound pattern noun A design pattern that combines at least two patterns into a solution that solves a recurring or general problem.
computer model noun A computer program, or network of computers, that attempts to simulate an abstract model of a particular system.
connascence noun A relationship between two or more elements of software in which changing one necessitates changing the others in order to maintain overall…
continuous delivery noun An approach where teams produce software in short cycles, ensuring that the software can be reliably released at any time.
continuous delivery pipeline noun An automated series of steps that moves software code from the development stage through building, testing, and deployment to a production…
controller noun In software applications using the model-view-controller design pattern, the part or parts of the application that treat input and output…
corrupted adj Containing errors.
coupling noun The degree of reliance between two or more software modules.
crash verb To terminate or halt execution due to an exception.
crash to desktop noun An event where a software program running on a computer with an operating system that features a graphical desktop unexpectedly terminates…
creeping elegance noun The tendency of programmers to disproportionately emphasize elegance in software at the expense of other requirements such as…
crosscut verb To affect several modules of a program, without the possibility of being encapsulated in any one of them. See Cross-cutting concern.
CRT noun Initialism of C runtime.
crunch noun The overtime work required to catch up and finish a project, usually in the final weeks of development before release.
Cupertino effect noun The replacement, by a spell checker, of words that are real (such as proper nouns or alternate spellings), but missing from its internal…
custom snowball noun A cascading chain reaction in which a single non-standard feature, modification, or workaround forces the creation of subsequent custom…
cutline noun In software testing, a hypothetical line that separates tests that will be performed from tests that may not be performed due to lack of…
cycle time noun The total elapsed time to complete an operation or set of operations.
cyclomatic adj Of or relating to a software metric that measures the complexity of a program based on the number of linearly independent paths through the…
cyclomatic complexity noun A quantitative measure of the number of linearly independent paths (branches) through a program's source code which indicates the…
data access object noun An object in programming that provides an abstract interface to some type of persistence mechanism, providing some specific data operations…
data recovery noun The process of retrieving deleted, inaccessible, lost, corrupted, damaged, or formatted data from secondary storage, removable media or…
DDD noun Initialism of domain-driven design (“methodology and set of priorities for object oriented programming”).
decorator pattern noun A structural (and partitioning) design pattern that allows behaviour to be added to an existing object dynamically.
deploy noun Deployment.
design pattern noun A formal, documented general reusable solution to a design problem in a particular field of expertise.
DevOps noun A software development method that stresses communication and collaboration between software developers and other information technology…
di noun Initialism of dependency injection.
disk operating system noun A type of computer operating system that requires a disk drive for secondary storage to manage files and load programs.
distribution noun A set of bundled software components.
distro noun A set of software components, often open source, that have been packaged into a larger product or component for distribution to end-users.
distro-hopping noun The process of frequently changing the operating system of one's computer to a different distribution of Linux.
DM noun Abbreviation of display manager.
docs noun documentation
drill down verb To examine information at another level or in greater detail; especially in a database, to navigate to a more detailed level or record.
drill up verb To replace data with data from one level higher or less specific.
dry adj Of code, having the quality of adhering to the principle of DRY; containing as little repetition as possible.
DTE noun Desktop Engineering
edgeware noun Computer software that is noticeably cutting-edge, that is, significantly innovative.
encapsulate verb To enclose objects in a common interface in a way that makes them interchangeable, and guards their states from invalid changes.

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