A glossary of terms

Obfuscate:

  • Spork Digital
  • 15 min

I’m not entirely sure this will come as a surprise, but developers chat ever so much crap. In a world of heady acronyms and bizarre sounding names for really mundane things, it’s easy for an outsider to be completely lost until they enter the magic circle of utter geek-based bullshit.

Last year and for the first time, Spork hired someone without a development background. In an attempt to make them feel more at home, I took it upon myself to start writing a brief explanation of every term I could think of. Turns out there were quite a few.

Then, a couple of months ago, someone (who shall remain anonymous as I like them) suggested that I made up some terms for a proposal. I suppose the theory was that I would sound more specialised. Naturally, I was somewhat incredulous, and so I decided this obfuscation had to stop.

And thus, for the benefit of all old, new and prospective clients, non-technical staff, partners and friends – and in a blatant attempt to exploit its benefit to Google search (#sorryNotSorry), I thought it not a terrible idea to put this up on our website.

So, if you’re the type of person who’d like to know the difference between their backend and their backlog, or a grunt and a GIT, then, Ladies and Gentlemen, imagine no more, this page really is for you.

(Disclaimer: If you are actually a techie, some of these explanations may grate with you. If you really want to contact us to point out some spurious nuanced inaccuracy, please feel free. I will politely ignore you. Remember, this article really isn’t for you…)

I guess if you spend 15 years as a developer, you pick up some stuff along the way. If anything above here doesn’t make sense, or you think there is something we’ve missed, then why not get in touch? We’d love to hear from you.

Spork Digital - A glossary of terms - Spork