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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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What is dependency injection?

There have been several questions already posted with specific questions about dependency injection, such as when to use it and what frameworks are there for it. However, What is dependency injection and when/why should or shouldn't it be used?
AR.
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What is reflection and why is it useful?

What is reflection, and why is it useful? I'm particularly interested in Java, but I assume the principles are the same in any language.
Lehane
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What is JSONP, and why was it created?

I understand JSON, but not JSONP. Wikipedia's document on JSON is (was) the top search result for JSONP. It says this: JSONP or "JSON with padding" is a JSON extension wherein a prefix is specified as an input argument of the call itself. Huh?…
Cheeso
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What are MVP and MVC and what is the difference?

When looking beyond the RAD (drag-drop and configure) way of building user interfaces that many tools encourage you are likely to come across three design patterns called Model-View-Controller, Model-View-Presenter and Model-View-ViewModel. My…
Mike Minutillo
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What is Inversion of Control?

Inversion of Control (IoC) can be quite confusing when it is first encountered. What is it? Which problem does it solve? When is it appropriate to use and when not?
Mike Minutillo
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What's the difference between a method and a function?

Can someone provide a simple explanation of methods vs. functions in OOP context?
willc2
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What's the difference between a proxy server and a reverse proxy server?

What is the difference between a proxy server and a reverse proxy server?
Vicky
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What is a monad?

Having briefly looked at Haskell recently, what would be a brief, succinct, practical explanation as to what a monad essentially is? I have found most explanations I've come across to be fairly inaccessible and lacking in practical detail.
ljs
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What is a race condition?

When writing multithreaded applications, one of the most common problems experienced is race conditions. My questions to the community are: What is the race condition? How do you detect them? How do you handle them? Finally, how do you prevent them…
bmurphy1976
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What do "branch", "tag" and "trunk" mean in Subversion repositories?

I've seen these words a lot around Subversion (and I guess general repository) discussions. I have been using SVN for my projects for the last few years, but I've never grasped the complete concept of these directories. What do they mean?
grapefrukt
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What are "named tuples" in Python?

What are named tuples and how do I use them? When should I use named tuples instead of normal tuples, or vice versa? Are there "named lists" too? (i.e. mutable named tuples) For the last question specifically, see also Existence of mutable named…
Denilson Sá Maia
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What is (functional) reactive programming?

I've read the Wikipedia article on reactive programming. I've also read the small article on functional reactive programming. The descriptions are quite abstract. What does functional reactive programming (FRP) mean in practice? What does reactive…
JtR
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What is the meaning of "POSIX"?

What is POSIX? I have read the Wikipedia article and I read it every time I encounter the term. The fact is that I never really understood what it is. Can anyone please explain it to me by explaining "the need for POSIX" too?
claws
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Definition of "downstream" and "upstream"

I've started playing with Git and have come across the terms "upstream" and "downstream". I've seen these before but never understood them fully. What do these terms mean in the context of SCMs (Software Configuration Management tools) and source…
brendan
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What is the difference between a framework and a library?

What is the difference between a framework and a library? I always thought of a library as a set of objects and functions that focuses on solving a particular problem or a specific area of application development (i.e. database access); and a…
anbanm
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