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Arjun Vijay Prakash
Arjun Vijay Prakash

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What The Hell is "Monkey Patching"? + 11 Software Development Terms βš‘οΈπŸ™Œ

πŸ‘‡ Believe It Or Not!

This list will prove to be helpful despite of whether you're new to the developer community or an experienced developer like me.

As I explored the domain of programming I came across a vocabulary filled with intriguing terms.

So, this article sheds light on some of the humorous expressions that frequently are used in conversations, within the software development community.

Here are some amusing terms that you might come across as a software engineer! πŸ˜„


πŸ’ Monkey Patching

It refers to modifications done during runtime. It is a temporary fix rather than a long-term solution.

#! Shebang

You might already know this term in spoken language but in computing it refers to the character sequence at the beginning of a script.

πŸ—‘ Garbage Collection

It refers to cleaning up memory by removing unused data.

πŸ“Š Patch

A patch is a collection of changes applied to software.

⭐️ Yoda Conditions

Conditions where the LHS and RHS of an expression are reversed, eg, 5 == count

πŸ”¨ Brute Force

It refers to naive algorithms/solutions to a problem that are not optimized.

🎩 Magic Number

It is an arbitrary numerical value that appears in code without any explained context or meaning.

🍝 Spaghetti Code

Commonly used to refer to code that is hard to understand or maintain.

πŸ‘ƒ Code Smell

A code smell is an indication that there is a problem in the fundamental design of the code.

🐀 Rubber Duck Debugging

It is the action of explaining a code problem in natural language to a rubber duck with the hope of identifying the issue while you explain it.

πŸ”₯ Hotfix

A hotfix is a small and quick software update to resolve a bug.

πŸ›  Yak Shaving

It refers to a situation when to achieve a goal, you must perform a series of seemingly unrelated tasks.


🌟 Wrapping Up

In summary, these unique expressions provide a peek, into the ever-growing software development culture, where innovation and troubleshooting intersect.

So when faced with a "Yak Shaving" situation, in the future approach it with a mindset and a sprinkle of humour πŸ™ƒ!

Also, drop a software dev term that is ridiculous that it exists in the comments!

The best comments will be featured in my upcoming post relating to the same topic in the first week of March.

I hope you liked the article! ❀️

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Happy Coding! πŸš€
Thanks for 15555! πŸ€—

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Bernd Wechner • Edited

Thanks. Note that "magic number" can also be a very specific reference to the first bytes in a file that reveal its type. Essentially a file-internal version of the file extension (the part of the file name after the last decimal point or dot) that is used to convey the type to a casual observer (magic numbers are historically not used for text files but only binary files). That said since Unicode arrived in the scene, text files can have one too (a BOM). Typically where a magic number and file extension disagree the magic number is prioritised, especially for binary files. Try, for example renaming a .JPG file to .PNG, most software will read it, display it or let you edit it and treat it as a JPG file in spite of your having changed the extension.