Shorthand Glossary

Browse 6 shorthand terms defined in plain English, from the cultural dictionary of computing.

6 Shorthand Terms

Bikeshed
Bikeshed is shorthand for an unimportant or trivial topic that receives disproportionate attention in group discussions, derived from Parkinson's Law of...
Dogfood
Dogfood, or dogfooding, is the practice of a company using its own products internally before or alongside releasing them to customers. The term comes from the...
LGTM
Looks Good To Me — the standard code review approval phrase, ranging in sincerity from 'I carefully reviewed every line' to 'I glanced at the diff for three...
Refactor
Verb form of refactoring. 'Let me refactor this.' In practice, can mean anything from renaming a variable to rewriting an entire module while insisting 'it's...
Rubber Duck (slang)
Used as a verb: 'I rubber-ducked the problem and found the bug.' Means to explain your code out loud to find the issue — whether to an actual duck, a...
Yak Shave
A single prerequisite task in a yak-shaving chain. 'Updating the SSL cert was a four-yak-shave just to fix the login bug.'

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