Famously...
There are only two hard things in Computer Science: cache invalidation and naming things.
― Phil Karlton
Concepts in computer science are usually nothing tangible so it's no surprise that naming things is hard.
Nevertheless, we do come up with clever, creative and funny names.
Some of them so established, we never pause and admire.
This is a curated list for when naming things is done right.
An algorithm for constructing the smallest shape that wraps a collection of points.
When you explore a search space and you reach a dead end, you follow your *tracks* back to the last crossroad and try the other way.
Violence is actually almost always a solution, but not a very clever one.
An algorithm that finds a solution by always picking the currently best-looking option without thinking too much about past and future decisions.
Starting somewhere in the hilly "landscape" of solutions, you go in the direction of steepest ascent until reaching the top of a hill. You might miss higher hills, though.
A type of priority queue and a reference to the infamously unorganized queues in Israel. Here items can *cut in line* when they *have already waiting friends*.
An ancient algorithm for finding all prime numbers up to a given limit. Non-primes are methodically sifted out, like unwanted material filtered through a sieve.
An optimization algorithm inspired by the metallurgical process of annealing, where slowly cooling a heated material allows it to settle into a low-energy, globally optimal state.
Allows classes with incompatible interfaces to work together by wrapping its own interface around that of an already existing class.
Adds new responsibilities to an object by wrapping it in a layer of additional behavior, just as you can decorate a room without changing its walls.
Analogous to a facade in architecture, a facade is an object that serves as a front-facing interface masking more complex underlying structure.
An anti-pattern where a single object knows too much or does too much. Like a god, it is omniscient and omnipotent.
A representation of a result that is available in the future, unless there are errors. Like in reality, promises are broken sometimes.
A programming antipattern where, in a single change, you wildly add code everywhere in your codebase.
A program with a tangled and hard-to-follow stucture.
Parser function that greedily consumes an input stream until it's satisfied.
Continuously runs functions that themselves return functions. Like a child on a trampoline that _returns_ and bounces back up.
Merges two lists into one list of pairs like the interlocking teeth of a zipper.
A secret value placed on the stack to detect buffer overflow attacks. If it has been altered, danger is near — just like a canary in a coal mine that warns miners of toxic gas.
A computer program that self-replicates by _infecting_ other computer programs, similar to the behavior of biological viruses.
Steps and practices that users should take to maintain system health and improve online security.
Refers to the use of lures to "fish" for sensitive information.
When a system (e.g. stolen computer) secretly reports back to a third party other than the current possessor. The name is a reference to the movie E.T.
A targeted, personal phishing attack to trick a specific individual or organization into believing that they are legitimate
A tabular summary of a classifier's "confusion", i.e., how often it thought to make correct predictions when it actually didn't.
A boundary dividing the space of possible data points. Here you decide, everything on this side is SPAM, everything on that side is not.
Minimizing a cost function by iteratively computing the gradient and moving in the direction of steepest descent.
The process of showing the machine a bunch of examples, until it learns what we want from it.
A programming paradigm where programs are compositions of interactions among multiple concurrent participants.
A functional language making extensive use of **closures** but with a **j** because it's running on the Java virtual machine.
Although C was certainly a bad name, C++ was quite clever. The iconic increment operator **++** indicates that **C++** is the successor.
An evaluation strategy which suspends evaluation until it's absolutely necessary and then never does it again.
Syntax that makes the language "sweeter" for human use. Usually a shorthand for common operations that can also be expressed in a more verbose form.
A grid-based layout resembling the compartmentation of bento boxes.
A kind of animated slideshow looping back on itself.
The metaphorical top of the user's desk, upon which objects such as documents and folders of documents can be placed.
A button to toggle a menu. The associated icon resembles a hamburger.
User interfaces that assume expensive operations will complete successfully, thereby improving the perceived performance.
Screen content is often less like a book with discrete pages and more like a continuous roll of parchment, i.e., a scroll.
A small message that briefly pops up at the edge of the screen and then disappears on its own, just like toast from a toaster.
Turing machines that produce numbers so insanely large, no other algorithm can keep up with them.
The problem of finding groups of mutual friends in a network of people with friendship relations. Or more generally, finding complete subgraphs.
A game world that showcases how astonishing complexity can arise from very simple ingredients.
A black box that magically gives answers even to undecidable questions like the halting problem.
The fact that in some formal languages any sufficiently long string can be _pumped_ with repetitions of its substring and the result stays in the same formal language.
Sandboxing tool forming a protective layer for your system.
Terminal app to keep MacOS from "sleeping".
A JavaScript library implementing the actor model for concurrent computation. The term is a reference to George Clooney, who is also an actor.
Database application, that is marketed as being so fault-tolerant and resilient as a cockroach.
The process that turns metal into rust (literally), but also a tool that "turns" C++ into Rust.
Like `git bisect` but can cope with flaky tests using Baysian inferance.
Pure Go implementation of the *br*otli compression algorithm . Also a reference to the [go brrr meme](https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/go_brrr).
Splits a file into encrypted fragments that only together can be decrypted again. In the Harry Potter universe, Horcruxes are fragments of a person's soul. To kill the person, all fragments must be destroyed.
A browser automation library. If the browser is the puppet, this is the puppeteer.
Simplified man pages with practical examples.
A JavaScript minifier. Removes everything that makes the code readable and pretty to make it smaller.
A dog-themed uploader component. The name is a blend of _upload_ and _puppy_. It even comes with a crash recovery plugin called _Golden Retriever_.
A bundler for JavaScript and other *web* assets with a short and descriptive name that also somewhat rhymes.
NodeJS dependency manager.
Abbreviating long words by keeping the first and last letter and writing the number of omitted letters in between.
Acronyms describing competing database ideologies (aka. SQL vs. NoSQL). Note that acid and base are also opposites in chemistry.
A central part of a network/application that significantly limits throughput/performance and should ideally be eliminated.
Different case styles where the name illustrates its appearance.
Writing a program in as few characters as possible. Just like how Golf players try to win in the fewest club strokes.
E.g., claiming a GitHub issue, then not working on it.
The _ware_ between _software_ and _hardware_.
This representation can encode numbers at very different magnitudes with a limited amount of digits by letting the radix point _float_ instead of being fixed in place.
In software architecture (like in actual architecture), frameworks provide a basic structure to build upon, guiding and constraining further development.
Jenga and LEGO bricks don't share the same interface, but you can always glue them together.
Chinas controversial internet censorship system and a reference to the Great Wall of China.
A bug that seems to disappear or change when one tries to study it. It's a pun on Werner Heisenberg, who discovered that the act of observing quantum systems inevitably alters their state.
A bug that, when an attempt to fix it is made, introduces multiple new bugs. It's a bug that cannot be fixed.
The implied future cost of shortcuts taken today, which accumulates like financial debt and must eventually be paid back — often with interest.
Stepping back in time through source code to understand execution and sometimes even to change history.
Shake the dependency tree until all the dead parts are falling off and you end up with a nice lean tree.
A program that outputs all even numbers and then all odd numbers generates an unfair enumeration of the natural numbers because some numbers are never reached.
When you write `if ("red" === color) {` instead of `if (color === "red") {` because it reads as, “if red equals the color”, similar to the way the Star Wars character Yoda speaks.