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Questions tagged [terminology]

Questions about the meaning or usage of programming terms.

From computing.surrey.ac.uk

Three major points:

  1. Firstly, proper terminology is concerned with the relationship between concepts, and between them and their designations, rather than with designations alone or with the objects they represent. This point is essential if quality is to be achieved, especially with synonyms and in multilingual environments.
  2. Secondly, a designation does not necessarily have to be a word or phrase, although it often is. Thus terminological resources may comprise symbols, drawings, formulae, codes, etc. as well as, or even instead of, words. This point is especially important given the move to multimedia systems.
  3. Thirdly, terminology is inextricably linked with specialist knowledge and hence with special languages or languages for special purposes (LSPs).
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"has_one" vs "belongs_to" vs "has_many" in RDBMS terms

Can someone please clarify what these mean in RDBMS terms. I always get these confused, and I can't find a single decent tutorial on this. Try to reduce the definitions to, Linking table Primary key Foreign Key Or, tell me why these definitions…
Evan Carroll
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What is the difference between "Web Services" and "web services"?

I consider there to be a distinct difference between "Web Services" and "web services" and find myself referring to the latter as "lower case web services". I'd loosely list the differences as: "Web Services" most conforming to the W3C…
Jon Cram
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What is the opposite of static initialization?

When communicating objects that initialize prior to main(), we usually refer to that as "static initialization". Is there a standard terminology for the opposite of that, something like "static de-initialization"? This would refer to when those…
void.pointer
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Recommended nomenclature: a better term than "parent"?

I am writing a connection-state keeping program based loosely on the "State" example here. In the example, the class Radio passes a pointer (better term?) to AmState when instancing AmState: class AmState(State): def __init__(self, radio): …
JS.
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The "byte-for-byte" terminology, what does it mean?

I would like to understand this terminology "byte-for-byte" in this phrase: Byte-for-byte, JavaScript is still the most expensive resource we send to mobile phones, because it can delay interactivity in large ways. This terminolgoy appears in…
vietean
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What is it called when you are programming and a program automatically updates your changes when you save changes to a file?

When programming there is a workflow that works like: Change a file and save it. The a compiler or interpreter. Look at the result. But there is also a workflow that goes like this: (actually it is similar to working with this stack overflow…
leeand00
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Canonical term for something that can only occur once? Something that can occur multiple times?

I'm really anal about what I name my classes, and I need an adjective for both something that is only allowed to happen once, as well as something that is allowed to happen multiple…
Daniel Schaffer
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How do you call an object which state can be completely described by its string representation?

Is there a name in the OOP world to refer to such objects? For example, in java "Word".toString(); Will return an output of Word. This is a string representation of the entity that exists currently in the program. Some more examples can be…
Ringo
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What does it mean that $var is set?

What does mean term that $var is set or not set (in PHP or general in programming)? I found out here http://www.php.net/manual/en/types.comparisons.php some comparison table, but sometime it confuses me. Does that mean that variable is set when its…
user6912198
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Terminology graphs with loops

I'm working on a project in which we use a type of undirected graphs where loops (an edge from a vertex to itself) but NOT parallel edges (multiple edges with the same end vertices), and I was wondering if there exists a name for these types of…
user9934848
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What word describes a table onto which all others are joined?

Say I have the following tables: REQUEST DELIVERY PAYMENT Business process: Customer submits a REQUEST, upon which delivery of the requested item is arranged. Once the item has been DELIVERED, a PAYMENT is processed. Data flows 1>2>3. If you are…
KHH
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identity VS identifier in c++

When learning Value categories, the term identity confuses me. I know that identifier is well-defined in the standard: http://eel.is/c++draft/lex.name An identifier is an arbitrarily long sequence of letters and digits. But it doesn't define…
Chen Li
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What is an inductively defined data type?

What are some examples of inductive data types? How do inductive types differ from their non-inductive counterparts? What can they do that is impossible otherwise? When should they not be used? Code snippets in any language would be greatly…
Mario Galic
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Reading CHMOD like values with php

# Permission 7 read and write and execute (1+2+4) 6 read and write (2+4) 5 read and execute (1+4) 4 read only 3 write and execute (1+2) 2 write only 1 execute only 0 none I like the pattern that you can store any combination of…
Moak
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What is using powers of two for bitwise OR and AND like this called?

I have a set of variables and I'm doing this: int a = 1, b = 2, c = 4, d = 8 /* etc. */; int result = a | c | d; The point is so I can do something like: if(result & a) { // stuff } I know this is common, I just don't know the word for it. Is…
Brendan Long
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