(
home
)
📝
notes on the glossary project- motivation, existing glossaries, etc
type:
note
Notes on
📎
Somerville Glossary of Software Design
Motivation
I think classic information organization tools like glossaries, timelines, maps etc. are underused in the computer world.
For example, software development is a 500 billion $/yr industry. It should have some of the best glossaries of all time.
Wikipedia's great, but its notability standards mean it's missing lots of good terms such as
cattle not pets
,
🖊️
Hyrum's Law
, etc.
I started this collection to shore up the situation for myself and hopefully inspire other projects.
Scope
This collection focuses on the dynamics of programming and design. It also includes some technical entries.
The goal is to collect terms I use myself
So on one hand it's not trying to be comprehensive. On the other hand includes some idiosyncratic stuff like
🖊️
Shea's Law
.
What should be included
For each entry:
a) Name of the thing
b) Short, colloquial definition
c) Canonical citation of where it was created
Ideally (b) and (c) will be the same, but there will be exceptions if the canonical citation is too long to serve as a short definition.
Existing glossaries
Wikipedia
some pages
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_computer_science
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Computer_programming_folklore
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Software_engineering_folklore
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Programming_principles
C2 wiki / WikiWikiWeb
creator:
👤
Ward Cunningham
launched: 1995
url:
wiki.c2.com
wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/WikiWikiWeb
has been frozen for years unfortunately
The Jargon File
url:
www.catb.org/jargon/html
wikipedia:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jargon_File
Sub-glossaries
📎
software technical terms
📝
relationships between high level code things: modularity, composability, abstraction, etc
Backlinks
📎
Somerville Glossary of Software Design