information retrieval

(information science) The science of searching for information in documents, searching for documents themselves, searching for metadata which describe documents, or searching within databases, whether relational stand-alone databases or hypertextually-networked databases such as the World Wide Web.


document retrieval

en-noun

document retrieval (countable and uncountable, plural document retrievals)

(information science) The matching of a user query against a set of free-text records, including unstructured text, such as newspaper articles, real-estate records or paragraphs in a manual.


text retrieval

text retrieval (countable and uncountable, plural text retrievals)

document retrieval
document retrieval#English

(information science) Synonym of document retrieval


index term

This includes a term dictionary that provides for each allowable index term a pointer giving the addresses of the document lists in the term index for the corresponding term; […]

1988, Gerard Salton, “Computer-Based Text Retrieval”, in edited by Allen Kent and James G. Williams, Encyclopedia of Microcomputers, volume 3, →ISBN, page 89:

If the indexing is being performed automatically, by an algorithm, there is consistency in the index term selection process.

1997, Gerald J. Kowalski, Information Retrieval Systems: Theory and Implementation, →ISBN, pages 55–56:

If a message discusses Labrador retrievers but the index term is ‘dogs’, the term is generic rather than specific. This will mean that a person desiring documents on Labrador retrievers must search for ‘dogs’ and then examine many irrelevant documents or document surrogates.

2003, James D. Anderson, “Organization of Knowledge”, in edited by John Feather and Peter Sturges, International Encyclopedia of Information and Library Science, 2nd edition, →ISBN, page 481:

(information science) A term associated with particular documents in an index used for document retrieval; typically, a term that captures the essential meaning of a document.


primitive type

programming language
programming language

(computer science) A data type provided by a programming language as a basic building block, such as integer, character or Boolean.


composite type

(computer science) A data type that can be constructed in a programming language out of that language's primitive types and other composite types; exemplified by array, structure, and class.


built-in type

first class function
first class function

(computer science) A data type provided by a programming language as a basic building block, such as integer, character or Boolean, but in some languages also list, hash table or first class function.


synonym ring

A synonym ring is a set of words or phrases (which are regarded as synonymous). A thesaurus is a set of trees whose nodes are synonym rings.

1982, F. N. Teskey, Principles of Text Processing

Each term in a synonym ring is equally likely to occur in any relevant article and so it is necessary to search for them all rather than one preferred term.

1985, Library Science with a Slant to Documentation

A synonym ring (see Figure 9-2) connects a set of words that are defined as equivalent for the purposes of retrieval. In practice, these words are often not true synonyms.

2002, Louis Rosenfeld, Peter Morville, Information Architecture for the World Wide Web, O'Reilly Media, →ISBN, page 178:

(information science, metadata) Synonym of synset


findability

(information science) The quality of a particular object being locatable.

(information science) The quality of a whole system being navigable.


SIGINT

SIGINT (countable and uncountable, plural SIGINTs)

(countable, uncountable, computing) A signal sent to a process by its controlling terminal when a user wishes to interrupt the process.


MTP

Media Transfer Protocol
w:Media Transfer Protocol

(computing) Initialism of Media Transfer Protocol, a generalization of PTP (Picture Transfer Protocol).

Media Transfer Protocol

Multipurpose Transaction Protocol
w:Multipurpose Transaction Protocol

(networking) Initialism of Multipurpose Transaction Protocol, a proprietary transport protocol.


EOT

(computing, telecommunications) Initialism of end of transmission.


selectable

graphical user interface
graphical user interface

(graphical user interface) An item that can be selected by the user.


CX

CX (countable and uncountable, plural CXes)

(networking, Ethernet) Abbreviation of (short haul) copper.


exit program

(computing, programming) A computer program which exits cleanly from an application, or on computer shutdown


computational linguistics

Coined by American linguist and computer scientist David Hays in the 1960s.

coinage

Prolog has been used for many purposes, but its inventor, Alain Colmerauer, was interested in computational linguistics, and this remains a classic application for the language. Moreover, Prolog offers a number of tools which make life easier for computational linguists, and we are now going to start learning about one of the most useful of these: definite clause grammars, or DCGs as they are usually called.

2006, Patrick Blackburn · Johan Bos · Kristina Striegnitz, Learn Prolog Now!, §7.1

(linguistics, computer science) An interdisciplinary field dealing with the statistical and/or rule-based modeling of natural language from a computational perspective. This modeling is not limited to any particular field of linguistics.


denotational semantics

(computer science) An approach to formalizing the meanings of programming languages by constructing mathematical objects called denotations which describe the meanings of expressions from the languages.

stærðfræðileg merkingarfræði

an approach to formalizing the meanings of programming languages


trigraph

These new features are charizing, stringization, token concatenation, string concatenation, trigraph replacement, and predefined macros.

1993, Mark Andrews, Visual C++ Object-oriented Programming, page 186:

(computing) A three-character sequence used to enter a single conceptual character.


XMA

(computing, historical) Initialism of extended memory area.


XMA

Expanded Memory Adapter
w:Expanded Memory Adapter

(computing, historical) Initialism of Expanded Memory Adapter.


breakpoint

(programming) A point in a program at which operation may be interrupted during debugging so that the state of the program at that point can be investigated.

斷點 /断点

(computing) point in a program where operation may be interrupted


breakpoint

en-verb

breakpoint (third-person singular simple present breakpoints, present participle breakpointing, simple past and past participle breakpointed)

breakpoints (present singular third-person)
breakpointing (participle present)
breakpointed (participle past)
breakpointed (past)

If the microprogrammer wishes to continue execution at a breakpointed location, it is desirable to execute the breakpointed microinstruction, replace the microinstruction with a branch microinstruction to restore the breakpoint, and continue microinstruction execution.

1981, Ben E. Cline, Microprogramming Concepts and Techniques, page 134:

(programming, transitive) To flag with a breakpoint.


subject indexing

controlled vocabulary
controlled vocabulary

(information science) The act of describing a document by index terms to indicate what the document is about or to summarize its content, the index terms often coming from a controlled vocabulary.


graphics card

Sitting down in front of her desktop, Veneza starts working, even though she hasn’t had a chance to install the new graphics card yet.

2022, N. K. Jemisin, The World We Make, Orbit, page 175:

(computing) A circuit board that generates and controls the visual display on a computer screen.


library and information science

en-noun

library and information science (uncountable)

sciences de l’information et des bibliothèques


synset

Clipping of synonym set, coined in the context of the WordNet project.

The basic object in WordNet is a set of strict synonyms, called a synset. By definition, each synset a word appears in is a different sense of that word.

1993, D. K. Harman, First Text Retrieval Conference (Trec-1): Proceedingshttps://books.google.cz/books?id=A81RmnI0l5cC&pg=PA344

In some cases a synset that appears to be a logical choice for a query is nonetheless detrimental.

1994, Donna K. Harman, The Second Text Retrieval Conference (TREC-2)

A synset is essentially what Sparck Jones (1964, 1986) calls a "run," which is the basic element in her theory of semantic classification.

1998, Christiane Fellbaum, WordNet: An Electronic Lexical Database

In general, based on concepts from NLP and information retrieval, synsets are defined as a collection of data entities that are considered semantically similar.

2019, Dipanjan Sarkar, Text Analytics with Python […] , Apress, →ISBN, page 522:

(information science) A set of one or more synonyms that are interchangeable in some context without changing the truth value of the proposition in which they are embedded.


genetic programming

genetic programming (usually uncountable, plural genetic programmings)

(computing) A search heuristic that explores the space of computer programs and is based on biological evolution.


journaling

journaling (countable and uncountable, plural journalings)

(computing, by extension) The change log of the file system or database.


MBT

MBT (countable and uncountable, plural MBTs)

model-based testing
model-based testing#English

(software, testing) Initialism of model-based testing.


RFI

RFI (countable and uncountable, plural RFIs)

(uncountable, computer science) Initialism of remote file inclusion.


PLA

software engineering
software engineering

principle of least astonishment
principle of least astonishment#English

(software engineering) Initialism of principle of least astonishment.


GPF

general protection fault
general protection fault#English

(computing) Initialism of general protection fault, a type of interrupt produced by IA32 CPUs.


UUCP

(computing, Internet) Initialism of Unix-to-Unix Copy Protocol, a file transfer protocol used on networks, traditionally for Usenet and e-mail transfers.


FLOSS

FLOSS has proven to be an extremely valuable tool for accelerating research in various fields of IT and engineering in order to address the needs of society in the future.

2019, Brian Fitzgerald, Audris Mockus, Minghui Zhou, Towards Engineering Free/Libre Open Source Software (FLOSS) Ecosystems for Impact and Sustainability, Springer, →ISBN, page 121:

(computing) Abbreviation of free/libre/open source software.


exabyte

Altogether, the human brain is estimated to hold something in the order of 200 exabytes of information.

2019, Bill Bryson, The Body: A Guide for Occupants, Black Swan, published 2020, page 4:

North American cloud traffic in 2015 measured 1.891 exabytes per year, in the Asia Pacific 908 exabytes per year, […]

2019, Andreas Hepp, Deep Mediatization: Key Ideas in Media & Cultural Studies, Routledge, →ISBN:

In 2010, Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, stated: “There were 5 Exabytes of information created between the dawn of civilization through 2003, but that much information is now created every 2 days” (Schmidt, 2010). Schmidt's forecast, indeed, proved to be an underestimation.

2021, Giuseppe Arbia, quoting Eric Schmidt, Statistics, New Empiricism and Society in the Era of Big Data, Springer Nature, →ISBN, pages 4–5:

(computing) One quintillion (10¹⁸, or 1,000,000,000,000,000,000) bytes or 1,000 petabytes.


recompile

Last-minute changes to source files necessitated several recompiles.


diverter

The diverter clearly gains from a successful diversion but pays a heavy price if caught.

2012, Morton D. Davis, Game Theory: A Nontechnical Introduction, page 47:

The game theory also requires a precise statement of all the conceivable moves the diverter might make and counter-moves available to the defender.

1980, LBL Newsmagazine, volumes 5-9, page 20:

(game theory) One who uses diversionary tactics.


petabit

(computing) One quadrillion (10¹⁵, or 1,000,000,000,000,000) bits or 1,000 terabits.


pebibit

(computing) Strictly, 2⁵⁰ (1024⁵, 1,125,899,906,842,624) bits or 2¹⁰ (1024) tebibits, as opposed to a petabit.


FCB

(computing) Initialism of file control block.


halfwidth

This would convert any half-width katakana characters to full-width katakana.

1993, GO Corporation, Penpoint Application Writing Guide:

...and half-width (zenkaku, hankaku) alphabets are regarded as separate...

1998, Rick Jelliffe, The XML & SGML Cookbook:

The half-width characters have normal character spacing...

2002, Cay S Horstmann, Gary Cornell, Core Java 2:

(computing, typography) Of a text character, occupying the space of half of a fullwidth character, or one "normal" text column.

半角

occupying half the width of a fullwidth character


ISA

ISA (countable and uncountable, plural ISAs)

instruction set architecture
w:instruction set architecture

(computing) Initialism of instruction set architecture.


ISA

Industry Standard Architecture
w:Industry Standard Architecture

(computing) Initialism of Industry Standard Architecture, an early type of personal computer expansion slot bus.


EOL

EOL (countable and uncountable, plural EOLs)

(computing) Initialism of end-of-life: the point where hardware or software becomes obsolete or obsolescent and ceases to be supported by the maker.


unbuffered

(computing) That operates without a hardware or software buffer.


vectorize

en-verb

vectorize (third-person singular simple present vectorizes, present participle vectorizing, simple past and past participle vectorized)

vectorizes (present singular third-person)
vectorizing (participle present)
vectorized (participle past)
vectorized (past)

Coordinate term: rasterize

The raster and vectorized images are displayed on a graphic monitor where the vector data is an active layer and the raster image is a background layer.

1997, Sergey Ablameyko, An Introduction to Interpretation of Graphic Images, SPIE Press, →ISBN, page 147:

(computer graphics, transitive) To convert an image into a vector graphics format.

vektoroida

to convert an image into a vector graphics format

The principles on which the Cyber 200 FORTRAN compiler tries to detect which parts of a program can be vectorized are similar to those used in the Cray CFT compiler.

1987, Ronald H. Perrott, Parallel Programming, Addison Wesley, →ISBN, page 157:

(computing, transitive) To convert a program that operates on scalar values into the equivalent program operating on vectors, usually as an optimization step inside the compiler (automatic vectorization).

vektoroida

to convert a program to operate on vectors


memory stick

(computing) One of a series of memory devices manufactured by the Sony Corporation ranging in size from a USB drive down to a flash card.

The first step to increasing your drive space is to add a new storage device. It can be a hard drive (IDE or SCSI), but also a USB or FireWire memory stick.

2003, Jon Hall, Paul G. Sery, Red Hat Linux Fedora For Dummies, page 343:

You might be wondering at this point what dark secrets I had locked away on my phone and memory sticks and email.

2008, Cory Doctorow, Little Brother, page 56:

To do this, you can run a script on a computer periodically to check for any attached USB disk drives or memory sticks.

2009, Steve Seguis, Windows PowerShell 2 For Dummies, unnumbered page:

(computing) A portable solid-state electronic flash memory data storage device equipped with a USB (or similarly specified) plug for direct connection to a corresponding port; a USB drive, thumb drive or pen drive.

data stick

generic portable solid-state data storage device


digitalize

digitalize (third-person singular simple present digitalizes, present participle digitalizing, simple past and past participle digitalized)

digitalizes (present singular third-person)
digitalizing (participle present)
digitalized (participle past)
digitalized (past)

From digital + -ize (“to make”) or digitalis + -ize.

How to lawfully digitalize resources has become the principal issue in constructing digital libraries. To digitalize resources means to transform a document into digital format, which only adds a mode of using the resources but does not produce a new one.

2004, Tom Mendina, Johannes J. Britz, editors, Information Ethics in the Electronic Age […] , McFarland, →ISBN, page 89:

(computing, transitive) Synonym of digitize


ASCIIbetical

(computing, informal, of a sorting) According to the order of the ASCII table, with uppercase and lowercase letters grouped separately.


prog

en-noun

prog (countable and uncountable, plural progs)

[…] is there some way to connect to my new comp so I can transfer some of the software progs […]

2001, n.one, “transfer progs from comp to comp”, in 24hoursupport.helpdesk (Usenet):

"Yoda", How do I get progs to run when linux 7.1 starts up?

I've looked around if I can get the prog to start a backup itself, but it still requires some manual commands.

2003, Leo Edwards, “Automating the Windows backup prog to commence backups?”, in microsoft.public.win98.apps (Usenet):


antipattern

From anti- + pattern, coined by Andrew Koenig in 1995.

If a Design Pattern gives you a general solution to a recurring problem in a particular context, then what does an anti-pattern give you? An Anti-Pattern tells you how to go from a problem to a BAD solution.

2004, Eric Freeman, Elisabeth Robson, Bert Bates, Kathy Sierra, Head First Design Patterns, O'Reilly, →ISBN, page 612:

(software engineering) A design pattern that may be commonly used, but is ineffective or counterproductive in practice.

antisuunnittelumalli

a design pattern that may be commonly used, but is ineffective or counterproductive in practice


underclock

en-verb

underclock (third-person singular simple present underclocks, present participle underclocking, simple past and past participle underclocked)

underclocks (present singular third-person)
underclocking (participle present)
underclocked (participle past)
underclocked (past)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-underclock.wav

(computing, transitive) To modify (a CPU) by the use of underclocking.


underclocking

(computing) The deliberate reduction of the speed of a CPU, often to reduce power consumption.


unblind

unblind (third-person singular simple present unblinds, present participle unblinding, simple past and past participle unblinded)

unblinds (present singular third-person)
unblinding (participle present)
unblinded (participle past)
unblinded (past)

(cryptography, transitive) To convert (a blind signature) back to the unblinded state (as opposed to the blinded state).


Sherlock

Sherlock (third-person singular simple present Sherlocks, present participle Sherlocking, simple past and past participle Sherlocked)

Sherlocks (present singular third-person)
Sherlocking (participle present)
Sherlocked (participle past)
Sherlocked (past)

Supposedly from an Old English scir-locc (“bright-lock”).
One of a group of surnames originally denoting hair colour, parallel to Blacklock, Harlock (Old English har (“grey”)), Silverlock.
In the computing verb sense, refers to the software Sherlock, which in 2002 came to replicate some of the features of an earlier complementary program called Watson.

The thing software developers fear most is being "sherlocked".

2012 July 13, “You've been sherlocked”, in The Economist:

All three developers are in a position common enough that it even has a name in the community. They have been "sherlocked".

2013 October 28, Alex Hern, “Sherlocked: how Mavericks is making some apps obsolete”, in The Guardian:

Last year, when Apple released iOS 7 it added a feature to the Photo app, allowing users to sort photos on the basis of location and date. Photoworks, a third-party app, too offered same functionality. In response, app developer Stephen Orth tweeted, "I guess my new app just got sherlocked."

2014 June 3, Javed Anwer, “WhatsApp CEO mocks Apple for copying features”, in The Times of India:

(computing slang) To obsolete a unique feature in third-party software by introducing a similar or identical feature to the OS or a first-party program/app.


subchannel

(computing) A distinct part of an I/O channel associated with a specific device.


vector graphics

(computing) Geometrical primitives based upon mathematical equations to represent images in computer graphics, contrasted with raster graphics.

ве́ктарная гра́фіка

geometrical primitives based upon mathematical equations to represent images


disk image

(computing) A copy of all or part of a disk drive retained for backup or replication purposes.


image copy

(databases, IBM) A backup copy of a database in a format that may be used, along with incremental logs, to recreate the database after a hardware failure


kernelization

en-noun

kernelization (countable and uncountable, plural kernelizations)

(computer science) A technique for creating algorithms for fixed-parameter tractable problems, involving a preprocessing stage in which inputs to the algorithm are replaced by a smaller input, called a kernel.


semiautomaton

(mathematics, computer science) a multiplicative operation of a monoid on a set


bitstring

(computing) a sequence of bits (binary digits)


DTN

delay-tolerant networking
w:delay-tolerant networking

(computing) Initialism of delay-tolerant networking.


rubber duck

en-verb

rubber duck (third-person singular simple present rubber ducks, present participle rubber ducking, simple past and past participle rubber ducked)

rubber ducks (present singular third-person)
rubber ducking (participle present)
rubber ducked (participle past)
rubber ducked (past)

rubber duck debugging
rubber duck debugging

(transitive, programming) To act as a sounding board for a programmer that is debugging their code, facilitating rubber duck debugging.


roman font

It will automatically reduce the size of the subscripts identified by “sub” and will choose italic or roman fonts for the remaining characters as appropriate.

1988, Peter P. Silvester, The UNIXᵀᴹ System Guidebook, page 201:

Moreover, most roman fonts offer italic counterparts, and italics offer another degree of interest.

1993, Mac, Word & Excel Desktop Companion, page 93:

(chiefly computing) A font that is upright, as opposed to oblique or italic.

Although 1 byte is all that is needed for Roman fonts, 2 bytes are needed for other character sets.

1992, Daniel Carter, Writing Localizable Software for the Macintosh, page 30:

CID fonts are basically the opposite of roman fonts. CID is short for Character IDentifier. CID fonts were developed for Asian markets and languages such as Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (what Adobe often refers to as CJK).

2008, Mordy Golding, Real World Adobe Illustrator CS4, page 261:

The largest group is the Roman fonts. They are used to type languages that use the Roman (Latin) alphabet (A, B, C, and so on).

2013, Angie Taylor, Design Essentials for the Motion Media Artist:

When producing Roman fonts, about 256 characters should be designed. Whereas designing Korean fonts, around 2,500 widely used characters should be designed among the total 11,172 characters.

2017, James J. (Jong Hyuk) Park, Shu-Ching Chen, Kim-Kwang Raymond Choo, Advanced Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering, page 289:

(computing) A font supporting the characters of the Latin alphabet.


spryte

A spryte can include scan-lines with no pixels in them, and particular pixels within a spryte can be designated as transparent.

1995, David L. Needle, Robert Nical, Method for controlling a spryte rendering processor, US Patent 5596693:

(computer graphics, rare) Alternative spelling of sprite (small image representing an entity in a video game)


jank

Ostensibly a back-formation from janky (“shoddy, poor quality”).

back-form

This also marks the first time I haven’t felt that Samsung jank on the phone, which deserves its own paragraph in its own right. That weird stuttering and pausing you’ve seen on so many Samsung phones seems to be almost completely gone on the Note 3 […]

In cases where you’re concerned about scrolling, the browser can manage the frame rate for you. But if you introduce a large amount of jank, then it won’t be able to do as good a job.

in order to hit this impressive frame rate, the “jank-free” Sky prioritizes the UI over other processes, meaning the app should stay smooth when it works heavily in the background.

2015, Bogdan Petrovan, Android Authority:

Even though JavaScript will try to update the animation every frame, it will likely not be able to do that fast enough and will cause dropped frames (jank) to occur.

2018, Eli White, Facebook React Native Blog:

(computing, slang) Perceptible pause in the smooth rendering of a software application's user interface due to slow operations or poor interface design.


jank

en-adj

jank (comparative more jank, superlative most jank)

more jank (comparative)
most jank (superlative)

Sadly, my new laptop is even more jank than my old one.


pickler

(programming) (in the Python programming language) A program or algorithm that performs serialization.


cisoid

(signal processing) Complex sinusoid or complex exponential.


swapper

(computing, demoscene) A group member responsible for acquiring and distributing new software releases.


power wall

(computing) The rapidly increasing loss of efficiency due to overheating as the power/speed of a CPU increases.


reroll

en-verb

reroll (third-person singular simple present rerolls, present participle rerolling, simple past and past participle rerolled)

rerolls (present singular third-person)
rerolling (participle present)
rerolled (participle past)
rerolled (past)

Their procedure is to unroll the loop once, trace schedule the two iterations, and then reroll the loop into one.

2012, Monica S. Lam, A Systolic Array Optimizing Compiler, page 143:

(transitive, programming) To convert (an unrolled instruction sequence) back into a loop.


mandelbug

Blend of Mandelbrot + bug, in reference to the Mandelbrot set.

Try to determine as soon as you can if this is a problem you can solve, or whether it's a mandelbug that technical support needs to look at.

1997, David Hutchinson, The Internet Workbook for Health Professionals, page 145:

(computing, informal) A software bug whose behaviour appears to be chaotic.


heisenbug

(ca. 1983) Blend of Heisenberg + bug. Named for the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, which states very roughly that any attempt to measure the position of a subatomic particle will disrupt its movement, making it harder to predict.

I recently encountered a particularly infuriating Heisenbug. A large program, when given a large input, was just mysteriously dying. Of course, I ran it under the debugger. The mystery deepened: the program returned quietly to the debugger.

1987 January 4, Don Lindsay, “More Heisen-debugs”, in RISKS Digest, volume 4, number 36:

Except for pointer messups in C on my side, the Heisenbugs I've come across were hardly ever caused by _me_.

1994 January 20, Heinz Wrobel, “'Heisenbugs'”, in comp.programming (Usenet), message-ID <heinz.0i4s@hwg.muc.de>:

There are multiple perf related issues like this that are hard to track down. They are borderline heisenbugs that are possibly race conditions, so bisecting doesn't work and even things like enablibg^([sic]) ftrace will make the issue go away (or crash ftrace itself).

2014 December 8, Vince Weaver, “Re: Linux 3.18 released”, in linux-kernel mailing list, message-ID <alpine.DEB.2.10.1412081331580.28373@pianoman.cluster.toy>:

(computing) A software bug which fails to manifest itself or manifests differently during debugging.


bohrbug

(computing) A software bug which manifests reliably under a well-defined, but possibly unknown, set of conditions.


schroedinbug

(computing, slang) A software bug which begins to manifest only when somebody debugging the code finds out that it should not work at all.


scheduler

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-scheduler.wav

(computer science) An operating system component responsible for allocating several resources, most commonly the use of processors by different concurrent processes or threads.


input device

(computing) Any of many hardware devices that provide input (from a user or elsewhere) to a computer.


laggy

en-adj

laggy (comparative laggier, superlative laggiest)

laggier (comparative)
laggiest (superlative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-laggy.wav

I've given up trying to play on that laggy server.

(computing, Internet, video games, informal) Tending to lag, or respond slowly because of network latency.


portable computer

en-noun

portable computer (plural portable computers)

(computing) A microcomputer powered by batteries with an integral display screen and integral input device (such as a keyboard) that can be used on the move.


notebook computer

notebook computer (plural notebook computers)

(computing) A class of laptop computer that is around the size of a spiral-bound notebook with A4 or letter-sized pages.


tablet computer

tablet computer (plural tablet computers)

(computing) A hand-held portable computer characterized by a tablet form factor and a touchscreen interface.

ܚܲܫܘܼܒ݂ܵܐ ܠܘܼܚܵܝܵܐ

ḥašūḇā luḥḥāyā


So called because it is the 11th version of the X Window System.

(computing) A windowing system for bitmap displays, common on Unix-like operating systems.


window manager

(graphical user interface) A piece of software that manages the layout of windows on the user's display.


VGA

Video Graphics Array
w:Video Graphics Array

(computer graphics) Initialism of Video Graphics Array, an obsolete computer display standard that superseded CGA and EGA, with a resolution of 640 × 480 pixels, and supporting up to 256 colours on screen from a palette of 262,144.


DVI

device independent file format
w:device independent file format

(computing) Initialism of device independent file format.


JDBC

(databases, Java programming language) Initialism of Java Database Connectivity.


HCI

HCI (countable and uncountable, plural HCIs)

human-computer interaction
human-computer interaction#English

(computing) Initialism of human-computer interaction.

(computing) Initialism of host-controller interface.


out-of-band

(programming) Referring to a value returned by a function that is not in its natural range of return values, but rather signals an exception.


hypervisor

The hypervisor is the component that translates the virtual machines into the underlying hardware. There are two types of hypervisors: The type 1 hypervisor runs directly on the host hardware; the type 2 or hosted hypervisor runs in software.

2011, Edward Whalen, Oracle VM Implementation and Administration Guide, McGraw Hill Professional, →ISBN, page 17:

(computing) A firmware or software system that provides a virtual machine and allows it to operate directly on underlying hardware (instead of via emulation), but within specified constraints.


bit rot

The rise of gaming has its own place in the story of digital culture, but Cerf warns that important political and historical documents will also be lost to bit rot.

2015 February 13, Ian Sample, “Google boss warns of 'forgotten century' with email and photos at risk”, in The Guardian:

(computing) The putative tendency of content in storage to become corrupt over time.

(computing) The tendency of software in storage to develop bugs over time due to minor incompatibilities with newer operating environments.


bit decay

(computing, less common) Synonym of bit rot


monome

From mono- + -ome; compare binomial, polynomial.

(mathematics, logic, computing) An expression with a single term, such as a product of numeric variables (with no addition) or a conjunction of possibly negated Boolean variables (with no disjunction).


unhide

en-verb

unhide (third-person singular simple present unhides, present participle unhiding, simple past unhid, past participle unhidden)

unhides (present singular third-person)
unhiding (participle present)
unhid (past)
unhidden (participle past)

How do I unhide the editing toolbar? I need to use those commands again.

(transitive, graphical user interface) To restore to visibility from being hidden; to show again.


sharding

en-noun

sharding (countable and uncountable, plural shardings)

A storage volume with many different potential shardings is analyzed more rapidly by the reuse of calculations made on neighboring vertices in the directed graph.

2006, A Merchant, M Kallahalla, R Swaminathan, Sharding method and apparatus using directed graphs, US Patent 7,043,621:

2007, T Brants, AC Popat, P Xu, FJ Och, J Dean, "Large Language Models in Machine Translation", in Proceedings of the 2007 Conference on Empirical Methods in
A sharding function determines which shard (chunk of data in the MapReduce framework) the pair is sent to.

(databases) A decomposition of a database into multiple smaller units that can handle requests individually.


legacy system

(computing) An old computer system or application program that continues to be used because the user (typically an organization) does not want to replace or redesign it.


legacy code

(computing) Source code that relates to an obsolete operating system or other obsolete technology.

屎山

Source code that relates to obsolete technology


Quotron

Originally a proprietary name. From quote + -tron?

(computing, finance) A computer system or service that provides stock market quotations


brain-damaged

en-adj

brain-damaged (comparative more brain-damaged, superlative most brain-damaged)

more brain-damaged (comparative)
most brain-damaged (superlative)

Generalization of “Honeywell Brain Damage” (HBD), a notional disease invented to explain certain poor design decisions in Honeywell Multics.

(computing, slang, derogatory) Poorly designed; obviously wrong.


line noise

(computing) Spurious characters due to signal noise in a communications link.

(programming) Data that looks random, as when outputting a binary file as text.

2000, Simon Cozens, Ten Perl Myths, perl.com,
In short, Perl doesn't write illegible Perl, people do. If you can stop yourself being one of them, we can agree that Perl's reputation for looking like line noise is no more than a myth.

(computing, derogatory) Incomprehensible source code or other textual material (often due to terseness or overuse of operators).


writable

writable (comparative more writable, superlative most writable)

more writable (comparative)
most writable (superlative)

The file is writable only for users in the admin group.

I burned my family's vacation photos onto a writable CD.

The following code snippet shows how to check whether a writable database already exists, and if not, create an editable copy.

2013, Patrick Alessi, Professional iOS Database Application Programming:

(computing, of a file, storage device, etc.) Capable of being written to.

In general, writable variables must have unique instances per processor executing a shader and therefore cannot be shared.

2009, Randi J. Rost, Bill M. Licea-Kane, Dan Ginsburg, OpenGL Shading Language:


multitasker

From multitask + -er or multi- + tasker.

This week we take a close look at four top contenders in the multitasking arena […] Other bolt-on multitaskers for PCs not included in this comparison include VM/386, Omniview, and Double DOS.

1990, InfoWorld, volume 12, number 39, page 63:

(computing) A computer system that multitasks.


semantic analysis

en-noun

semantic analysis (plural semantic analyses)

(computing) The phase in which a compiler adds semantic information to the parse tree and builds the symbol table.


mathematical semantics

denotational semantics
denotational semantics

(computer science) A study of formal semantics of computer languages, such as denotational semantics.


background processing

(computing) The execution of a subsidiary operation by a computer while the user works with another application.


divitis

(web design, usually derogatory) The practice of authoring web-page code with many div elements in place of meaningful semantic HTML elements.


webbook

(computing) Any of several portable computers (or similar) that have access to the Internet and are primarily used to read such books.


draggable

Without a doubt, many programs would benefit if their listboxes and listviews supported dragging-and-dropping. Such listviews with draggable items are commonly used to gather items in a desired set for the user.

1995, Alan Cooper, About face: the essentials of user interface design:

(graphical user interface) Capable of being dragged.


draggable

(graphical user interface) An item that can be dragged by the user.


wireless adapter

wireless adapter (plural wireless adapters)

(computing) Any of several devices that allow connectivity from a PC or PDA to a wireless network.


crashy

en-adj

crashy (comparative crashier, superlative crashiest)

crashier (comparative)
crashiest (superlative)


traverse

en-verb

traverse (third-person singular simple present traverses, present participle traversing, simple past and past participle traversed)

traverses (present singular third-person)
traversing (participle present)
traversed (participle past)
traversed (past)

From Middle English traversen, from Old French traverser, from Latin trans (“across”) + versus (“turned”), perfect passive participle of Latin vertere (“to turn”).

to traverse all nodes in a network

(transitive, computing) To visit all parts of; to explore thoroughly.

at traversere

computing: to visit all parts of; to explore thoroughly


bag of words

You can then use the bag of words to train classifiers, a special kind of algorithm used to break words down into categories.

2023, John Paul Mueller, Luca Massaron, Python for Data Science For Dummies, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 132:

computational linguistics
computational linguistics

(computational linguistics) The collection of words from an unprocessed text without regard to grammar; a collection of word unigrams.


NLQ

near letter-quality
near letter-quality#English

(typography, computing) Initialism of near letter-quality.


embedded system

en-noun

embedded system (plural embedded systems)

(computing) A computer system with a dedicated function within a larger mechanical or electrical system, often with real-time computing constraints.


statistical semantics

(computational linguistics) The study of estimation of the meanings of words by looking at patterns of words in huge collections of texts, using statistical methods.


SWIFT

(computing) Acronym of Simple Web Interface Toolset.


bps

(computing) Initialism of bit per second, a measure of speed of digital communication.

bit per second

In most digital systems using binary code, 1 Baud = 1 bps. https://newhavendisplay.com/blog/baud-rate/#difference


virtualization

storage virtualization

CPU virtualization

(computing) Creating a virtual version of common computing hardware at the same abstraction level.


sanitizer

sanitizer (countable and uncountable, plural sanitizers)

Coordinate term: linter

memory sanitizer

Sanitizers have been available for a while with the Clang compiler and were later also introduced into the GCC toolset.

2018, Radovan Bast, Roberto Di Remigio, CMake Cookbook: Building, testing, and packaging modular software with modern CMake, Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 218:

(software) A program to detect errors in code, usually integrated into a compiler.


virtual machine

virtual machine (plural virtual machines)

(computing) A software emulation of a computer that runs in an isolated partition of a real computer.

(computing) A computer system that is implemented in software rather than hardware and that runs bytecode.


jit

en-verb

jit (third-person singular simple present jits, present participle jitting, simple past and past participle jitted)

jits (present singular third-person)
jitting (participle present)
jitted (participle past)
jitted (past)

if you call f(1.0) you get a newly jitted version that is specialized for Float64

2012 May 23, Stefan Karpinski, “Julia compiles the script every time?”, in Stack Overflow:

(transitive, computing) To compile (program code for a virtual machine) immediately when needed, as part of the execution process.


cycler

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-cycler.wav

When the last cycler has run for 200ms we pass control back to the first one and begin again.

(computing) A task in a cycle of tasks where the status of being active task is passed around the loop.


scientific calculator

en-noun

scientific calculator (plural scientific calculators)

(mathematics, computing) An electronic calculator that can handle trigonometric, exponential and often other advanced functions, and can show its output in scientific notation and sometimes in hexadecimal, octal or binary.


symlink

en-verb

symlink (third-person singular simple present symlinks, present participle symlinking, simple past and past participle symlinked)

symlinks (present singular third-person)
symlinking (participle present)
symlinked (participle past)
symlinked (past)

(computing, transitive) To make accessible by means of a symbolic link.


subfolder

(computing) A folder within another folder.


multicast

Coordinate term: broadcast

multicast address

On an LAN, each host's network interface monitors the LAN and accepts packets addressed to the multicast address that defines the host group to which the packets belong. Unlike broadcasting, multicasting allows each host to choose whether it wants to accept multicast packets.

2009, Robert Rümmler, Alexander Daniel Gluhak, Hamid Aghvami, Multicast in Third-Generation Mobile Networks: Services, Mechanisms and Performance, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 14:

(computing, networking) The simultaneous transmission of data to several destinations on a network.


multicast

The result is a new multicast delegate that invokes both of the original implementing methods.

2005, Jesse Liberty, Programming C#: Building .NET Applications with C#:

(programming, of a delegate) Having multiple targets, such that a call to the delegate triggers a call to each target.


pointee

(computing) The data or object referenced by a pointer.


type-safe

en-adj

type-safe (comparative more type-safe, superlative most type-safe)

more type-safe (comparative)
most type-safe (superlative)

Narrow performs a type-safe conversion into an instance of a subclass.

(programming) Not susceptible to the class of programming errors that could lead to items of one data type being incorrectly treated as another type.


bitwise

(computing) Treating a value as a series of bits rather than a numerical quantity.


most significant bit

en-noun

most significant bit (plural most significant bits)

(computing) The bit that represents the largest fraction of a value, its position depending on the endianness of the system.


least significant bit

least significant bit (plural least significant bits)

(computing) The bit (binary digit) that represents the smallest fraction of a value, its position depending on the endianness of the system.


nullability

nullability (countable and uncountable, plural nullabilities)

When this is not explicitly defined, a user-defined data type or a column definition will use the default setting for nullability.

1999, Brad McGehee, SQL Server 7 Administration, page 174:

Because nullability is one of a number of attributes of any particular database field, and because dealing with changes in nullability is no different from dealing with name and data type changes, the idea of making a value type nullable in C# when it isn't nullable in the database just in case the underlying database schema changes makes little sense.

2006, Eric Gunnerson, A Programmer's Introduction to C# 2.0, page 271:

We know that Kotlin requires us to explicitly define references that can hold null values. Java on the other hand is much more lenient about nullability, so we may wonder how Kotlin handles types coming from Java (basically the whole Android SDK and libraries written in Java).

2017, Marcin Moskala, Android Development with Kotlin, page 43:

(computing) The state or property of being nullable.


lookahead

lookahead (countable and uncountable, plural lookaheads)

Our computer chess program uses lookahead to avoid difficult endgames.

(computing, software compilation) The analysis in advance of subsequent decisions that would be made if a particular branch of an algorithm was followed.


write-only

(computing) Capable of being written but not read.


microdrive

From micro- + drive. In the sense of "miniature hard disk", originally a trademark.

One-inch disks typically held about 8 to 10 GB and microdrives were either 2 or 4 GB.

2011, Geoff Varrall, Making Telecoms Work:

1984, Alison Maguire, interviewed in SINCLAIR talks... (in Crash magazine, issue 3, April 1984) http://www.crashonline.org.uk/03/sinclair.htm
There are lots of things that will benefit from being on a microdrive cartridge but if you release something on microdrive you're only going to sell it to people with microdrive.

The Spectrum has its own inexpensive mass storage unit - the microdrive which starts at about £150 for 100k of storage, but this may not be suitable in all cases, since the storage unit may be damaged if turned on with the disc in position.

1986, African Energy Programme (Commonwealth Science Council), Renewable energy development in Africa (volume 2, page 161)

Disk interfaces have been around since the year dot, as people soon realised that the microdrive was unreliable, unstable and generally rubbish for the storage of anything, useless except as a rather small beermat.

1989 June, Phil South, “Rage Hard”, in Your Sinclair, archived from the original on 2012-03-10:

(computing, historical) An early computer storage system using cartridges of looped tape.


opcode

When the microprocessor decodes the JSR opcode, it stores the operand into the TEMP register and pushes the current contents of the PC ($00 0128) onto the stack.

1992, Michael A. Miller, The 68000 Microprocessor Family: Architecture, Programming, and Applications, page 47:

In the tradition of other low-level languages, many CIL opcodes tend to be cryptic and completely unpronounceable by us mere humans.

2010, Andrew Troelsen, Pro C# 2010 and the .NET 4 Platform, page 655:

(computing) A mnemonic used to refer to a microprocessor instruction in assembly language.


Speccy

TETRIS (Mirrorsoft)
Yes, it's the game that makes Amiga and ST owners look at your Spectrum with real jealousy, 'cos the Speccy version of this classic Russian reaction-tester out performs the 16-bit ports every time.

1991, Stuart Campbell, "The YS Top 100 Speccy Games of All Time (Ever!)" (in Your Sinclair magazine)

Before you sit down in front of your Speccy to play an adventure, equip yourself with a pencil, eraser and plenty of paper. This so that you may draw a 'map' of the adventure as you move around.

1992 October, Larry Horsfield, “The SU Guide to Playing and Writing Adventure Games”, in Sinclair User, number 128:

1998, Bongo, “Emulation under threat (yes, Speccies too)”, in comp.sys.sinclair (Usenet):

Developers wasted no time making games for the Speccy.

2003, Rusel DeMaria, Johnny L. Wilson, High Score!: The Illustrated History of Electronic Games:

(computing, colloquial, chiefly UK) A Sinclair ZX Spectrum computer.


autosave

autosave (countable and uncountable, plural autosaves)

/ˈɔːtəʊˌseɪv/

Thanks to autosave, I was able to recover most of my unsaved thesis after a power cut.

(computing) A software facility that saves an open document periodically to avoid the risk of data loss.

Only the three most recent autosaves are preserved, to save disk space.

(computing, countable) A copy of a file or document saved automatically by such a facility.


autosave

en-verb

autosave (third-person singular simple present autosaves, present participle autosaving, simple past and past participle autosaved)

autosaves (present singular third-person)
autosaving (participle present)
autosaved (participle past)
autosaved (past)

/ˈɔːtəʊˌseɪv/

(computing, transitive) To save (data) automatically.


rethrow

rethrow (third-person singular simple present rethrows, present participle rethrowing, simple past rethrew, past participle rethrown)

rethrows (present singular third-person)
rethrowing (participle present)
rethrew (past)
rethrown (participle past)

(programming, transitive) To throw (an exception) again.


rethrow

(programming) The act of throwing an exception again.


unhandled

(computing) Of an event, exception, etc.: not having a handler.


light pen

(computer hardware) A pen-like device allowing a computer user to interact with the screen display.


mouse over

mouse over (third-person singular simple present mouses over, present participle mousing over, simple past and past participle moused over)

mouses over (present singular third-person)
mousing over (participle present)
moused over (participle past)
moused over (past)

(computing) To move a computer mouse pointer over (an element of the display).


multiload

The finished game will be a multiload, with the first load allowing players to select which aircraft they'd like to fly.

1989 May, “A Rock Star Ate My Computer”, in Crash, number 64:

If it is a multiload game, then you will probably only get the main game part, not the levels […]
[…] sometimes possible to obtain the loader code, and change it to a suitable format that the emulators will use (called LLT multiloads - Load Level Trap) where the emulator looks for a certain 12 byte loader command to be called up.

1999, Seamus Ross, Ann Gow, Digital Archaeology: The Recovery of Digital Materials at Risk:

(computing, dated) A computer program that loads its code and data in a number of separate stages, typically to work around memory constraints.


multiload

multiload (third-person singular simple present multiloads, present participle multiloading, simple past and past participle multiloaded)

multiloads (present singular third-person)
multiloading (participle present)
multiloaded (participle past)
multiloaded (past)

The best games like Midnight Resistance made use of the 128 memory and did not multiload (unlike other discontinuous RAM sized machines, like the C64/128 or the Beeb, many Spectrum games used the 128 memory if available, so don't go on about how 128k made no difference and all games multiloaded).

1995, Joseph Kelleher, “Hey Joe, ...with that PD software in your hand?”, in comp.sys.acorn.games (Usenet):

(computing, dated, intransitive) To load in separate stages.


decidability

en-noun

decidability (countable and uncountable, plural decidabilities)

(logic, computer science) The state or condition of being decidable.


memoize

en-verb

memoize (third-person singular simple present memoizes, present participle memoizing, simple past and past participle memoized)

memoizes (present singular third-person)
memoizing (participle present)
memoized (participle past)
memoized (past)

(transitive, computing) To store (the result of a computation) so that it can be subsequently retrieved without repeating the computation.


miswrite

From Middle English miswriten, from Old English miswrītan, misƿrītan (“to write incorrectly; make a mistake in writing; miswrite”), equivalent to mis- + write.

Line fluctuations can cause misreads and miswrites.

1983, Lawrence Calmus, The business guide to small computers, page 143:


ray tracing

(computer graphics) A technique that produces realistically shaded images by projecting imaginary light rays to determine which parts of an object should be illuminated.


pre-render

pre-render (third-person singular simple present pre-renders, present participle pre-rendering, simple past and past participle pre-rendered)

pre-renders (present singular third-person)
pre-rendering (participle present)
pre-rendered (participle past)
pre-rendered (past)

(transitive, computer graphics) To render (a complex image) in advance.


supertype

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-supertype.wav

(computing) The data type represented by a superclass.


supertype

supertype (third-person singular simple present supertypes, present participle supertyping, simple past and past participle supertyped)

supertypes (present singular third-person)
supertyping (participle present)
supertyped (participle past)
supertyped (past)

(computing) To categorize as a supertype.


bit shift

(computing) A bitwise operation in which the bits in a value are shifted left or right.


bit shift

bit shift (third-person singular simple present bit shifts, present participle bit shifting, simple past and past participle bit shifted)

bit shifts (present singular third-person)
bit shifting (participle present)
bit shifted (participle past)
bit shifted (past)


finalizer

(programming) A function that runs when an object is garbage collected, similar to a destructor.


bitmask

(computing) A pattern of bits indicating which bits in a second pattern are to be modified.


bitmask

bitmask (third-person singular simple present bitmasks, present participle bitmasking, simple past and past participle bitmasked)

bitmasks (present singular third-person)
bitmasking (participle present)
bitmasked (participle past)
bitmasked (past)

(computing, transitive) To mask (a value) using a bitmask.


source control

(computing) A technology that handles access to computer files containing source code so that several users can work on the files without interfering with each other's changes.


skinnable

en-adj

skinnable (comparative more skinnable, superlative most skinnable)

more skinnable (comparative)
most skinnable (superlative)

(computing, of software with user interface) Having support for skins (user interface customizations).


crosspost

(computing, indexing) An instance of crossposting, or the post thus created.


alpha channel

Coined by Alvy Ray Smith and Ed Catmull in the 1970s. Smith writes: "We called it that because of the classic linear interpolation formula αA+(1-α)B that uses the Greek letter α (alpha) to control the amount of interpolation between, in this case, two images A and B". That is, when compositing image A atop image B, the value of α in the formula is A's alpha channel.

(computer graphics) A numerical value specifying a level of translucency to be applied to a colour.


alpha blending

(computing) A computer graphics technique that simulates translucency by combining colours.


software deployment

en-noun

software deployment (countable and uncountable, plural software deployments)

(computing) All the activities employed in making software ready for use.


POD

POD (countable and uncountable, plural PODs)

(uncountable, programming) Initialism of plain old data.


migratable

en-adj

migratable (comparative more migratable, superlative most migratable)

more migratable (comparative)
most migratable (superlative)

(computing, marketing) Suitable for being migrated.


ULA

Uncommitted Logic Array
uncommitted logic array#English

(computing, electronics) Initialism of Uncommitted Logic Array.


multiuser

(computing, telecommunications) Of an operating system, etc., having capabilities for serving many users simultaneously.


collision detection

en-noun

collision detection (countable and uncountable, plural collision detections)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-collision detection.wav

(computing, chiefly video games) The process or mechanism of determining whether two shapes are partially occupying the same space.

(networking) A mechanism in Ethernet to detect when two computers are sending frames at the same time, and also to deal with such collisions when they happen.


call stack

The details of the call stack are hidden from general view. As a Lua programmer, you want to keep in mind that a stack is being used behind the scenes to make sure that function calls work as expected, but in general you won't need to be aware of its implementation or details.

2007, Kurt Jung, Aaron Brown, Beginning Lua Programming, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 216:

(programming) A stack that stores details of the functions called by a program in sequence, so that each function can return on completion to the code that called it.


valueness

Coordinate term: referenceness

(programming, rare) The quality of being a value or a value type.


webtop

Web services are on the rise, favoring the "webtop" over the desktop in much new development.

2007, Paul J. Deitel, C++ How to Program, page 34:

(computing) Integration of desktop office-productivity applications with Web-based information and application delivery.


file allocation table

file allocation table (plural file allocation tables)

[…], although their access involves traversing the indirection in the file allocation table.

2006, Dhananjay M. Dhamdhere, Operating Systems: A Concept-based Approach, 2nd edition, Tata McGraw-Hill, page 346:

The file allocation table needs just a single entry for each file, […]

2008, A. A. Puntambekar, I. A. Dhotre, Systems Programming, 3ʳᵈ revised edition, Technical Publications Pune, page 13:20

For the file allocation table type of file systems, an entire file system allocation table is large and requires many disk sectors to store, […]

2008, Bruce Jacob, Spencer W. Ng, David T. Wang, Memory Systems: Cache, DRAM, Disk, Morgan Kaufmann, page 691

(computing) A table used internally by the operating system to keep track of the structure of a disk and where files are stored on it.

文件配置表

a computer file system architecture and industry standard


fixed-point

(computing) Being or using an internal number representation with a fixed number of decimal places (as opposed to floating-point).


cyclomatic

This finding reveals that the drawing of a CFG for a given program or component is not necessary in the cyclomatic analysis.

2007, Yingxu Wang, Software Engineering Foundations: A Software Science Perspective, CRC Press, →ISBN, page 820:

(software engineering) Of or relating to a software metric that measures the complexity of a program based on the number of linearly independent paths through the source code.


bogon

From bogus (“fake, phony”) + -on (“suffix used to form names of elementary particles or fundamental units”).

Chain book sellers are, by and large, bogon and bozon emitters like nothing you've ever seen.

1996, John Novak, “Re: TOR is Fucking with Us All”, in rec.arts.sf.written.robert-jordan (Usenet):

(computing, slang) The imaginary elementary particle of bogosity; the anti-particle to the cluon.

(networking, slang) An invalid Internet Protocol packet, particularly one sent from an address that is not in use.


cluon

from clue (“idea, inkling”) + -on (“suffix used to form names of elementary particles or fundamental units”)

(computing, slang) The imaginary elementary particle of cluefulness; the anti-particle to the bogon.


clutron

From clue (“idea, inkling”) + -tron (“suffix used to form names of elementary particles”).

(computing, slang) A cluon (hypothetical particle of cluefulness).


tribrid modeller

tribrid modeller (plural tribrid modellers)

(computing) A CAD system that is capable of modelling three-dimensional objects as combinations of surfaces, solids and polygons


MITM

Man-in-the-middle attack
Meet-in-the-middle attack

(cryptography) Initialism of meet-in-the-middle attack: Cryptographic attack that attempts to find a value in each of the ranges and domains of the composition of two functions such that the forward mapping of one through the first function is the same as the inverse image of the other through the second function


front end

(computing) That part of a hardware or software system that is conceptually closest to the user; the user interface.

frontal

that part of a hardware or software system that is closest to the user


front-end

front-end developer

front-end framework

(computing) Relating to the front end or user interface of a hardware or software system.


back-end

back-end database

back-end developer

(computing) Relating to the back end part of a hardware or software system.


reference implementation

reference implementation (plural reference implementations)

(software engineering) A piece of software that implements a specification of requirements and whose main purpose is to help in the creation of other software implementations of the specification by serving as a point of reference rather than being put to directly productive use.

mallitoteutus

implementation of a specification which serves as an example


wireless modem

(computing) A modem fitted with an antenna that transmits and receives using radio waves


OSI

ITU-T
International Telecommunications Union

(networking) Initialism of Open Systems Interconnection. An International Standard ISO/IEC 7894:1994(E) subtitled Basic Reference Model. A four-part document that contains a formal description of an idealized computer network architecture. The document is also published as ITU-T Recommendation X.200

Open Systems Interconnection

Open Source Initiative
w:Open Source Initiative

(software, organisation) Initialism of Open Source Initiative.


microformat

This type of microformat is, according to microformats.org, “a minimal solution to a single problem, built from standard XHTML elements.” More complex microformats that are built from elemental microformats and often also other HTML […]

2007, John Allsopp, Microformats: Empowering Your Markup for Web 2.0, Apress, →ISBN, page 95:

(computing) A simple data format that can be embedded in a webpage.


preconfigure

en-verb

preconfigure (third-person singular simple present preconfigures, present participle preconfiguring, simple past and past participle preconfigured)

preconfigures (present singular third-person)
preconfiguring (participle present)
preconfigured (participle past)
preconfigured (past)

(transitive, computing) To set up or configure a software system or hardware device with standard settings before selling or implementing it.


EFI

Extensible Firmware Interface
w:EFI system partition

(computing) Initialism of Extensible Firmware Interface.


SRS

en-noun

SRS (countable and uncountable, plural SRSes)

software engineering
software engineering

(software engineering) Initialism of software requirement specification.

(education, software) Initialism of spaced repetition software.


access specifier

access specifier (plural access specifiers)

Examples of access specifiers in C# are internal, private, protected, and public.

Java has the access specifiers private, protected, public, and the default specifier package that does not have a keyword.

object-oriented programming
object-oriented programming

(software, object-oriented programming) A keyword applied to a variable, method, etc. that indicates which other parts of the program are permitted to access it.


access modifier

access modifier (plural access modifiers)

(software, object-oriented programming) An access specifier.


ETL

Coordinate term: ELT

extract, transform, load
w:extract, transform, load

(computing, data warehousing) Initialism of extract, transform, load.


queue up

en-verb

queue up (third-person singular simple present queues up, present participle queueing up or queuing up, simple past and past participle queued up)

queues up (present singular third-person)
queueing up (participle present)
queuing up (participle present)
queued up (participle past)
queued up (past)

(computing, informal, transitive) To enqueue (something): to add (it) to a queue.


zero one infinity rule

(computing, informal) The rule that a database, a user interface, etc. should allow for either zero, one, or an indefinite number of an entity.


IDM

en-noun

IDM (countable and uncountable, plural IDMs)

Alternative form: IdM

identity management
w:identity management

(design, software) Initialism of identity management.


next generation networking

next generation networking (uncountable)

(networking) The transmission of voice, data, video and any other form of information in packets over the same network.


enregister

en-verb

enregister (third-person singular simple present enregisters, present participle enregistering, simple past and past participle enregistered)

enregisters (present singular third-person)
enregistering (participle present)
enregistered (participle past)
enregistered (past)

Enregistering a value during compilation of a program may improve runtime performance.

(programming) To store in a register of the CPU.


formal semantics

(computer science) the rigorous mathematical study of the meaning of programming languages


radix sort

(computing) Any of various sorting algorithms in which items are processed according to the value of each digit or character in turn


loading screen

The color graphic loading screens are some of the best I've seen on a C64 and serve their purpose well — to distract the subscriber while the slow 1541 drive transfers the program into the C64's RAM.

1986, Mike Cane, The Computer Phone Book: Guide to using online systems:

So, as long as you don't mind the substantial lack of 'player involvement', and the strange purple-skinned people on the loading screen, Tie-Break is a neatly put-together and enjoyable game.

1990, Adidas Championship Tie-Break (game review in Your Sinclair magazine issue 59, November 1990)

(computing, dated) A graphical display shown while a program loads (e.g. from cassette tape), comparable to the splash screen in modern software.

tela de carregamento

computing: a graphical display shown while a program loads


line break

(computing) A character indicating that subsequent characters should appear on a separate line of text.


screengrab

"Let's boot out @GNRailUK and bring in @TfL to run our line," he tweeted later that year on June 25, sharing a screengrab of the latter's proposals.

2019 November 20, Daniel Puddicombe, “Should Transport for London take over suburban services?”, in Rail, page 34:


screengrab

screengrab (third-person singular simple present screengrabs, present participle screengrabbing, simple past and past participle screengrabbed)

screengrabs (present singular third-person)
screengrabbing (participle present)
screengrabbed (participle past)
screengrabbed (past)


non-breaking

(computing) Not generating a line break, as in non-breaking space or non-breaking hyphen.


hash collision

(computing) The situation where two or more inputs to a hash function produce identical output.


interop

Using CLR types with classic C++ libraries is an example of C++ interop, which is discussed in greater detail in Chapter 12.

2007, Gordon Hogenson, C++/CLI: The Visual C++ Language for .NET, page 92:

Generally, we will want to avoid doing heavy image processing in WPF without C++ interop because of performance issues. After all, we are looping through and applying operations to over 2 million pixels, 30 times a second!

2017, Mansib Rahman, Beginning Microsoft Kinect for Windows SDK 2.0, page 56:


textmode

(computing, chiefly attributive) A display that supports text but not graphics.


turboload

Even headerless LOADs will work with the Sprint, though be warned, it can't cope with the now common turboload.

1985, Speed Trials (in Your Spectrum issue 14, May 1985)

Saboteur and Turbo Esprit (I bought both) have one turboload side and one ordinary load. So if you do have problems with the fast load, you can load in the other side.

1986, “Lloyd Mangram's Forum”, in Crash, number 29:

I don't think the Server64 is being taken any further, the programmer was losing interest when I emailed him a few months ago and it can't accept turboloads […]

1997, Jason, “c64 Server64 Question”, in comp.sys.cbm (Usenet):

(computing, historical) A software mechanism that loads data from cassette tape more rapidly than usual, saving time and making software piracy more difficult.


register variable

en-noun

register variable (plural register variables)

(programming) A variable whose value is stored directly in a register for faster access.


determinize

en-verb

determinize (third-person singular simple present determinizes, present participle determinizing, simple past and past participle determinized)

determinizes (present singular third-person)
determinizing (participle present)
determinized (participle past)
determinized (past)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-determinize.wav

(computer science) To remove non-determinism in an automaton; to convert a non-deterministic automaton to a deterministic one.


blit

From BitBLT, the name of a computer graphics operation which stands for bit-block transfer and is pronounced bit blit.

(computer graphics) A logical operation in which a block of data is rapidly moved or copied in memory, most commonly used to animate two-dimensional graphics.


blit

blit (third-person singular simple present blits, present participle blitting, simple past and past participle blitted)

blits (present singular third-person)
blitting (participle present)
blitted (participle past)
blitted (past)

(computing, transitive) To transfer by a blit operation.


uninstaller

(computing) A program that uninstalls software.


OFM

orthodox file manager
orthodox file manager#English

(computing) Initialism of orthodox file manager.


Gouraud shading

en-noun

Gouraud shading (usually uncountable, plural Gouraud shadings)

/ɡuːˈɹəʊ ʃeɪdɪŋ/

/ɡuːˈɹoʊ ʃeɪdɪŋ/

From Henri Gouraud, French computer scientist.

(computer graphics) A method of simulating the effects of light and colour across the surface of an object, based on estimates of the surface normal of each vertex in a polygonal 3D model.


NTP

Network Time Protocol
w:en:Network Time Protocol

(computing) Initialism of Network Time Protocol.


pling

This illustrates the order in which bytes are poked into memory with the pling operator.

1989, John Littler, John Maher, Computers in the laboratory: a student guide to microprocessor interfacing:

IMO, prefixing a directory name with a pling so that a program within it is run when you double click on it is a rather untidy way to do things.

1994, C.P. Brown, “HAhAhA”, in comp.sys.acorn.advocacy (Usenet):

Make sure that you consider ISO 9660 restrictions on the use of characters in disc, directory and file names. Only upper case alpha and numeric characters plus the underscore (_) and pling (!) can be used as legal characters.

1994, Stewart Palmer, Mark Moir, Developing CD-ROM products for Acorn machines:

Acorn Computing used to be big offenders when it came to referring to applications by their pling-inclusive names. They loved it. Unfortunately it made their articles sound silly (for want of a better adjective).

1996, Tim Wiser, “Pling thing revisited”, in comp.sys.acorn.apps (Usenet):

(computing, dated) The symbol ! (an exclamation mark).


XP

Extreme Programming
extreme programming#English

(software engineering) Initialism of Extreme Programming.


XP

(computing) Ellipsis of Windows XP (standing for experience).


minimax

(decision theory, game theory) A decision rule used for minimizing the maximum possible loss, or maximizing the minimum gain.


maximin

(decision theory, game theory) A rule to identify the worst outcome of each possible option to find one's best (maximum payoff) play.


dropdown list

graphical user interface
graphical user interface

(graphical user interface) A user interface control GUI element similar to a list box which allows the user to choose one value from a list.


list box

(graphical user interface) A GUI widget that allows the user to select one or more items from a list contained within a static, multiple line text box.


categorical dual

categorical dual (plural categorical duals)

(category theory) For a given category C, its dual category Cᵒᵖ is obtained by reversing the direction of each one of the arrows of C.


pushout

* Deverbal from push out.
* (one who leaves school): Intended to avoid the negative implications of dropout.

(category theory) The colimit of a pair of morphisms which share the same domain.


initial object

In the category of sets, the initial object is the empty set, since there exists a unique function, namely the empty function, from the empty set into any other given set.

(category theory) An object within a category which sends out arrows to all other objects in that category, and such that each of these arrows is unique.


terminal object

terminal object (plural terminal objects)

In the category of sets, a terminal object is any singleton, since there exists a unique function, namely the constant function, from any given set into that singleton.

The terminal object is the limit over the empty diagram.

(category theory) An object within a category which receives arrows from all other objects in that category, and such that each of these arrows is unique.


exponential object

exponential object (plural exponential objects)

An exponential object generalizes its interpretation in category #92;mathbf#123;Set#125;; namely, that of as a function set or internal hom-set.

The pair Z^Y,#92;mbox#123;eval#125;#58;Z^Y#92;timesY#92;rightarrowZ is the terminal object of the comma category (-#92;timesY)#92;downarrowZ. Therefore the exponential object is a kind of universal morphism.

(category theory) An object which indexes a family of arrows between two given objects in a universal way, meaning that any other indexed family of arrows between the same given pair of objects must factor uniquely through this universally-indexed family of arrows.

currying ∼ exportation_(logic)

an instance of which is the transpositioning λ in the figure

modus ponens

homologous to the universal evaluation morphism, eval


storage device

(computer hardware) A piece of hardware whose main function is to store data.


PnP

(computing) Initialism of plug and play.


haptics

Future work of this research field will include two issues: the safety and psychology of haptics.

2003, Julie A. Jacko, Andrew Sears, editors, The Human-Computer Interaction Handbook: Fundamentals, Evolving Technologies and Emerging Applications, page 218:

2008, Manuel Ferre (editor), Haptics: Perception, Devices and Scenarios: 6th International Conference: EuroHaptics, Madrid, Spain, June 2008: Proceedings, LNCS 5024.

However haptics is more than that. Haptic perceptions range from minor interactions in everyday life, eg, drinking from a glass or writing this text, to a means of social communication, eg shaking hands

2009, Thorsten A. Kern, Engineering Haptic Devices: A Beginner's Guide for Engineers, page 5:

(computing) The study of user interfaces that use the sense of touch.

haptiikka

computing: study of user interfaces with sense of touch


haptic interface

haptic interface (plural haptic interfaces)

(computing) A user interface that allows a user to receive tactile feedback through the movement of a limb or the head.


biocuration

(biology, computing) The organization, representation and making accessible of biological data to both humans and computers


treebank

If one wants to use a treebank for linguistic investigation, […]

2003, Diana Santos, “Timber! Issues in treebank building and use” in Computational Processing of the Portuguese Language, eds. Nuno J. Mamede, Jorge Baptista, Isabel Trancoso, Maria das Gracas Volpe Nunes, p. 152

(linguistics, computational linguistics) A database of sentences which are annotated with syntactic information, often in the form of a tree.


treebank

en-verb

treebank (third-person singular simple present treebanks, present participle treebanking, simple past and past participle treebanked)

treebanks (present singular third-person)
treebanking (participle present)
treebanked (participle past)
treebanked (past)

(linguistics, computational linguistics) To parse and annotate sentences according to a treebank.


websafe

(Internet, computer graphics, historical) Of colours used in the design of a web page: not liable to be dithered on any system, thus appearing the same to all visitors to the website.


observability

en-noun

observability (countable and uncountable, plural observabilities)

“In 2018, we saw many companies that are cloud-native and in the tech sector talking about observability,” he said. “Last year, we saw this becoming more mainstream, with large organizations adopting cloud-native technologies and becoming interested in observability.”

2021 February 18, Scott Carey, quoting Spiros Xanthos, “Observability: What IT should know as the technology heats up”, in InfoWorld:

Observability is defined as the ability to understand the internal state of a system by only looking at external outputs of the system. […] Observability builds on monitoring and enables you to gain insights about the internal state of your application.

2021, Brendan Creane, Amit Gupta, Kubernetes Security and Observability, O'Reilly, →ISBN, page 72:

In other words, SREs are directly responsible for the effectiveness of observability.

2023, Jeremy Proffitt, Rod Anami, Becoming a Rockstar SRE: Electrify your site reliability engineering mindset to build reliable, resilient, and efficient systems, Packt Publishing Ltd, →ISBN, page 59:

distributed computing
distributed computing

(computing, distributed computing) The ability to collect data about the execution of distributed programs, especially the interaction among its components.


digital rights management

(computing) A set of access control technologies that restrict the use of proprietary hardware and digital files by an end user, so as to enforce copyright restrictions.

デジタル著作権管理

でじたるちょさくけんかんり


blitter

Not only is the Amiga blitter fully integrated with and supported by the system as a whole, it also has access to its own direct memory channel […]

1986 December 8, InfoWorld, volume 8, number 49, page 46:

Using the hardware blitter to move bitmaps from VRAM to VRAM is much faster than moving them from system memory to VRAM.

2002, André LaMothe, Tricks of the Windows Game Programming Gurus, page 315:

(computing) A software or hardware mechanism that blits.


I started creating 8-bit music around 2002 when I picked up nanoloop[…]

2007, Nick Collins, Julio d'Escriván, The Cambridge companion to electronic music, page 189:

(computing, of a word size, or an integer) Represented using units of 8 bits (1 byte)

Typically far more complex than the songs of the 8-bit games, songs in Amiga games had a highly varied structure, but usually followed the same basic principles seen in the 8-bit games (shorter loops with fewer distinct sections for battle music, and longer loops with more distinct sections for in-game music).

2008 January 1, Karen Collins, Game Sound: An Introduction to the History, Theory, and Practice of Video Game Music and Sound Design, MIT Press, →ISBN:

Much of La-Mulanas 8-bit' aesthetic is tied to its self-imposed graphical limitations. To start, the native resolution of 256 × 192 pixels is (as we would expect) much less than that of contemporary standards[…]

2008 November 12, Brett Camper, “Retro Reflexivity: La-Mulana”, in Bernard Perron, Mark J.P. Wolf, editors, The Video Game Theory Reader 2, Routledge, →ISBN:

(computer graphics, music) Originating from or resembling the art or music of the 8-bit computer era.


co-recursive

Co-recursive algorithms allow infinite large objects to be used without necessarily running out of memory.

(computing) Describing a definition, particularly of an algorithm, given in terms of its output, rather than its input.


cross compiler

(computing) A compiler that generates code for a platform other than the one it runs on.


clock speed

clock speed (countable and uncountable, plural clock speeds)

(computing, computer hardware) The rate, measured in hertz, at which a processor performs its fundamental operations.


paravirtualization

paravirtualization (countable and uncountable, plural paravirtualizations)

(computing) An approximate virtualization in which the emulated operating system has been modified for convenience or efficiency.


bitplane

Alternative form: bit plane

(computing) The set of bits stored at the same relative position in each byte and thus having comparable effects on the overall data, used for sound and image processing, etc.


savegame

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-save game.wav

(computing, sometimes chess) A saved game.


tokenize

en-verb

tokenize (third-person singular simple present tokenizes, present participle tokenizing, simple past and past participle tokenized)

tokenizes (present singular third-person)
tokenizing (participle present)
tokenized (participle past)
tokenized (past)

(transitive, computing) To reduce to a token or set of tokens by lexical analysis.

(transitive, computing) To substitute sensitive data with meaningless placeholders.


savestate

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-savestate.wav

(computing, video games) A file that contains an emulator's or virtualizer's state at the moment it was saved to disk. The file contains the contents of the memory, registers and other pertinent data that allows the user to resume the application from the moment the file was created.


virtualizer

(computing) Software that provides virtualization services.


option button

(graphical user interface) A radio button.


scriptable

(computing) That can be extended or automated through scripting.


scriptable

The Ark engine itself has a module for Lua scriptables, and in particular the animation files (.anm) are defined with the Lua module.

2003, Tom Gutschmidt, Game Programming with Python, Lua, and Ruby, page 290:

(computing) Something that can be extended or automated through scripting.


metastring

The $D metastring expands to the current date and time.

(computing, rare) A string of characters used as a placeholder for a variable data item.


metacharacter

This chapter moves on to look at several regular expression metacharacters and modifiers. Metacharacters can be combined with literal characters and quantifiers, which were discussed in Chapter 3, to create more complex regular expression patterns.

2005, Andrew Watt, Beginning Regular Expressions, John Wiley & Sons, →ISBN, page 73:

You can't enter invisible characters—such as tab characters, line-end characters, or carriage returns—in the Find What or Change To fields. To get around this, you enter codes—known as “metacharacters”—representing those characters.

[2006, Olav Martin Kvern, David Blatner, Real World Adobe InDesign CS2, Peachpit Press, →ISBN, page 224:

(computing) A character used to signify something other than its literal form, such as the asterisk when used as a wildcard.


battery-backed

akkukäyttöinen

electronics: using a battery to maintain something

using a rechargeable battery to maintain operation

paristokäyttöinen

using a non-rechargeable battery to maintain operation

akkumuistia käyttävä

using a rechargeable battery to maintain storage

paristomuistia käyttävä

using a non-rechargeable battery to maintain storage

(electronics, computing) Using a battery to maintain volatile memory when powered off.


volatile memory

en-noun

volatile memory (countable and uncountable, plural volatile memories)

(computer hardware) Computer memory (such as RAM) that requires a constant electrical charge to maintain its contents.

haihtuva muisti

computer memory requiring constant charge


unoptimized

(chiefly computing, management) Not optimized.


auto-reply

auto-reply (countable and uncountable, plural auto-replies)

I'd like to be able to disable auto-reply for certain users.

(email, computing, uncountable) A feature in e-mail software that sends automatic replies, used for instance when the recipient of a message is on holiday.

I sent an email to the school secretary, only to receive an auto-reply.

If you have tried to accomplish work in August that requires outside assistance (work like scheduling, deal making, or, say, researching an article about out-of-office auto-replies), you probably ride this particular emotional roller coaster several times a day.

2015 August 27, Emily Gould, “The Art of the Out-of-Office Reply”, in The New York Times:

(email, computing, countable) A message sent by this means.


in-line expansion

in-line expansion (countable and uncountable, plural in-line expansions)

(software compilation) The replacement by a compiler of a function call with a copy of the entire function body, sometimes used as an optimization.


HA

HA (countable and uncountable, plural HAs)

(computing, uncountable) Initialism of high availability.


pre-increment

(computing) An increment operation that takes place prior to evaluation of the expression that contains the variable being incremented.


pre-increment

en-verb

pre-increment (third-person singular simple present pre-increments, present participle pre-incrementing, simple past and past participle pre-incremented)

pre-increments (present singular third-person)
pre-incrementing (participle present)
pre-incremented (participle past)
pre-incremented (past)

(transitive, computing) To perform such an operation upon.


post-increment

(computing) An increment operation that takes place after evaluation of the expression that contains the variable being incremented.


post-increment

post-increment (third-person singular simple present post-increments, present participle post-incrementing, simple past and past participle post-incremented)

post-increments (present singular third-person)
post-incrementing (participle present)
post-incremented (participle past)
post-incremented (past)


pre-decrement

(computing) A decrement operation that takes place prior to evaluation of the expression that contains the variable being decremented.


pre-decrement

pre-decrement (third-person singular simple present pre-decrements, present participle pre-decrementing, simple past and past participle pre-decremented)

pre-decrements (present singular third-person)
pre-decrementing (participle present)
pre-decremented (participle past)
pre-decremented (past)


post-decrement

(computing) A decrement operation that takes place after evaluation of the expression that contains the variable being decremented.


post-decrement

post-decrement (third-person singular simple present post-decrements, present participle post-decrementing, simple past and past participle post-decremented)

post-decrements (present singular third-person)
post-decrementing (participle present)
post-decremented (participle past)
post-decremented (past)


aspect-oriented

en-adj

aspect-oriented (comparative more aspect-oriented, superlative most aspect-oriented)

more aspect-oriented (comparative)
most aspect-oriented (superlative)

The advantage of our aspect-oriented email notification system is that we can change which emails it sends without editing the main program.

(computing) Describing a system which has been written so that different subsystems appear to add themselves to the main business logic without that logic having to include them explicitly.


quadlet

The quadlets are time aligned for accuracy so that they may be loaded into the FIFO registers which are 32 bits wide and 64 quadlets deep.

2000, Ian Robertson Sinclair, Practical electronics handbook, page 257:

(computing) A word consisting of four bytes.


octlet

(computing) A word (or rather, a doubleword) consisting of eight bytes (64 bits)


halfword

(computing) An area of storage one half the size of the word in a particular system; usually two bytes


doubleword

(computing) An area of storage double the size of the word in a particular system; in a 16-bit architecture, this is equal to four bytes.


inversion of control

software architecture
software architecture

(software architecture) Abstract principle describing an aspect of some software architecture designs in which the flow of control of a system is inverted in comparison to the traditional architecture, getting the flow of control from a generic code part.

obrácení řízení

abstract principle describing an aspect of some software architecture designs


dependency injection

en-noun

dependency injection (countable and uncountable, plural dependency injections)

(software architecture) A type-safe way of supplying an external dependency to a software component.

依賴注入 /依赖注入

a process of supplying an external dependency to a software component


business logic

business logic (usually uncountable, plural business logics)

(computing) Algorithms in a software system that model real-life business objects and their interactions.

obchodní logika

algorithms in a software system that model real life business objects and their interactions


OVA

(computing, virtualisation) Abbreviation of Open Virtualization format Archive.


configurator

(computing) A small software application intended to assist in the configuration of a particular part of the system.


AOP

AOP (countable and uncountable, plural AOPs)

aspect-oriented programming
aspect-oriented programming#English

(computing, uncountable) Initialism of aspect-oriented programming.


demoscene

Coordinate term: artscene

Demoscene is an extremely arcane subculture characterized by endlessly clashing perspectives, trends, and technological innovations.

2005, Chris Gehman, Steve Reinke, The sharpest point: animation at the end of cinema:

Casual computer users could not create these texts; in fact, the driving force behind most of the hacker teams in the demoscene was the prospect of creating a demo that exceeded the abilities of all other hackers...

2006, Karen Hellekson, Kristina Busse, Fan fiction and fan communities in the age of the Internet: new essays:

The demoscene is chiefly a European community that originates from the mid-1980s and continues to exist even today.

2009, John Impagliazzo, Timo Järvi, Petri Paju, History of Nordic Computing 2:

(computing) The informal computer art subculture that produces and watches demos (audiovisual computer programs).


demogroup

Some of his modules were later also used by crackers and demogroups. Bamiga Sector One, for example, used his module titled Blueberry for the cracktro of Carrier Command.

2005, Tamás Polgár, Freax: the brief history of the demoscene: Volume 1:

(demoscene) A named group of affiliated people involved in the demoscene.


demoparty

They were the organizers of the first Russian demoparty, Enlight '96 in St. Petersburg, but unfortunately there weren't any quality releases.

Extensive documentation on the history of copyparties and demoparties has been lovingly preserved by the demoscene itself.

2008, Tara McPherson, Digital youth, innovation, and the unexpected, page 193:

In the mid-1980s, demoparties were also copyparties, where the first so called hot releases of cracked and trained games changed hands. However, illegal software copying later disappeared […]

2021, Mark J. P. Wolf, Encyclopedia of Video Games:

(demoscene) A party organised by and for the demoscene, typically involving socializing, computer programming, and competitions.


LAN party

For obvious reasons, one-day events are the easiest to set up, and it is recommended that the first LAN party you host be a one-day party.

2001 October 8, Network World, volume 18, number 41:

People like to go to LAN parties because graphically intensive games play better over a LAN than over the Internet[…]

2007, Meredith G. Farkas, Social software in libraries, page 219:

LAN parties have been around ever since geeks started playing games on computer networks.

2011, Brian Johnson, Duncan Mackenzie, Xbox 360 For Dummies:

(computing) A social event based around a LAN (local area network) where participants engage in computer activities such as multiplayer gaming.


key binding

I changed the key binding for pause to the Escape key.

(computing) A key, or key combination, which, when pressed, causes something to happen.


uncached

(computing, of a device) Having no cache.


reimage

en-verb

reimage (third-person singular simple present reimages, present participle reimaging, simple past and past participle reimaged)

reimages (present singular third-person)
reimaging (participle present)
reimaged (participle past)
reimaged (past)

(computing, transitive) To completely replace the operating system (on a particular computer) with a preconfigured image, typically as a drastic means of fixing problems.


non-terminal

(computing theory) A non-terminal symbol in a formal grammar.


non-terminal symbol

en-noun

non-terminal symbol (plural non-terminal symbols)

(computing theory) A symbol in a formal grammar that cannot appear in sentences of the grammar but may eventually be resolved into a sequence of terminal symbols.


terminal symbol

terminal symbol (plural terminal symbols)

(computing theory) A symbol in a formal grammar that can appear in sentences of the grammar.


NP-complete

Informally, a problem is in the class NPC—and we refer to it as being NP-complete—if it is in NP and is as "hard" as any problem in NP. We shall formally define what it means to be as hard as any problem in NP later in this chapter. In the meantime, we will state without proof that if any NP-complete problem can be solved in polynomial time, then every problem in NP has a polynomial-time algorithm. Most theoretical computer scientists believe that the NP-complete problems are intractable, since given the wide range of NP-complete problems that have been studied to date—without anyone having discovered a polynomial-time solution to any of them—it would be truly astounding if all of them could be solved in polynomial time. Yet, given the effort devoted thus far to proving NP-complete problems intractable—without a conclusive outcome—we cannot rule out the possibility that the NP-complete problems are in fact solvable in polynomial time.

2001, Thomas H Cormen, Charles E Leiserson, Ronald L Rivest, Clifford Stein, Introduction To Algorithms, 2nd edition, The MIT Press, page 968:

Every area of math seems to have its own NP complete problems. For example, the question of whether or not a graph contains a Hamiltonian circuit is a quintessential NP complete problem and, since it can be explained with little higher level math, is a popular choice in expository works.

2002, Thomas A. Garrity, All the Mathematics You Missed: But Need to Know for Graduate School, Cambridge University Press, page 317:

A problem Π is said to be NP-complete if each problem in NP is reducible to Π. Hence
(4.13) if some NP-complete problem belongs to P, then P=NP.

2003, A. Schrijver, Combinatorial Optimization: Polyhedra and Efficiency, Volume A, Springer, page 43:

(computing theory, of a decision problem) That is both NP (solvable in polynomial time by a non-deterministic Turing machine) and NP-hard (such that any (other) NP problem can be reduced to it in polynomial time).


MDI

MDI (countable and uncountable, plural MDIs)

medium-dependent interface
w:Medium-dependent interface

(computer hardware, communication) Initialism of medium-dependent interface.

multiple document interface
w:multiple document interface

(software, graphical user interface) Initialism of multiple document interface.


MDI

Microsoft Document Imaging format
w:Microsoft Document Imaging Format

(software, graphics) Initialism of Microsoft Document Imaging format.

Mission Data Interface
w:Mission Data Interface

(software, navy) Initialism of Mission Data Interface.


undock

en-verb

undock (third-person singular simple present undocks, present participle undocking, simple past and past participle undocked)

undocks (present singular third-person)
undocking (participle present)
undocked (participle past)
undocked (past)

After I undock my laptop, I can run it for about six hours on battery power.

(transitive, computing) To remove from a docking station.

(transitive, computing) To drag (a user interface element, such as a toolbar) away from its fixed position so that it floats freely.

tauwehe

a computer term for dragging an element from its fixed position


docking station

en-noun

docking station (plural docking stations)

(computing) A piece of hardware into which a laptop computer can be plugged for use as a desktop computer, peripherals such as the monitor being connected directly to the docking station.


codepage

From code + page, originally used in IBM's EBCDIC-based systems.

Coordinate term: codespace

(computing) A mapping to a particular character set, where there are several possible sets that share the same code points.


code page

(computing) Alternative spelling of codepage


code point

In UTF-8, the number of bytes used to write a character to a file depends on the Unicode code point.

A code point is one entry in the Unicode character database. A code point is not the same as a character, depending on the meaning you give to “character.” What appears as a character on screen is called a grapheme in Unicode.

2009, Jan Goyvaerts, Steven Levithan, Regular Expressions Cookbook, O'Reilly, →ISBN, page 45:

Today, Unicode defines 1,112,064 code points, far exceeding the 2-byte capacity originally set aside for Unicode characters. A Unicode code point is simply an integer value that Unicode associates with a particular character symbol; you can think of it as the Unicode equivalent of the ASCII code for a character.

2020, Randall Hyde, Write Great Code, 2nd edition, volume 1, No Starch Press, →ISBN, page 102:

(computing, especially Unicode) A numerical offset in a character set, etc., as opposed to a displayed grapheme or character, which can be composed of several code points.


alpha-beta pruning

(computing theory) An algorithm for pruning a search tree by eliminating any branch that is demonstrably inferior to a branch previously encountered.

alfa–beeta-karsinta

algorithm for pruning a search tree by eliminating inferior branches


search tree

The red-black tree is a balanced binary search tree that has quite fast insert and delete operations and is always sorted.

(computing theory) A tree (data structure) set up to facilitate searching.


page down

en-verb

page down (third-person singular simple present pages down, present participle paging down, simple past and past participle paged down)

pages down (present singular third-person)
paging down (participle present)
paged down (participle past)
paged down (past)

From the Page Down key on a keyboard that performs this function.

As I paged down through the year-old comments, I came to one young man's posting, in which he casually mentioned that he was looking for a boyfriend.

(computing) To scroll down to the next page of content.


page up

page up (third-person singular simple present pages up, present participle paging up, simple past and past participle paged up)

pages up (present singular third-person)
paging up (participle present)
paged up (participle past)
paged up (past)

From the Page Up key on a keyboard that performs this function.

When I paged up or down, the text would sometimes get mangled and duplicated.

(computing) To scroll up to the previous page of content.