The Land Before Internet: How everyday computer terms got their names

Matt Coady — Wed, 05 May 2021 14:28:34 +0000

3 Years ago last month I made a simple tweet then went to bed.

Matt Coady

@themattcoady

I've been working with HTML for about 20 years and just today I realized that Radio Buttons refer to actual radio buttons, where only one can be pressed at a time.

16:38 PM - 24 Apr 2018

It was one of those aha "I feel like an idiot for not making that obvious connection" moments.

Well as it turns out a lot of people felt the same way because I woke up to dozens of notifications. Years later, at 1.2 million impressions it's still my most active tweet (by a long shot). In the replies, twitter user "HTeuMeuLeu" followed up with this equally interesting bit of technology naming history:

HTeuMeuLeu

@hteumeuleu

@themattcoady Do you know about uppercase and lowercase?

15:16 PM - 25 Apr 2018

Referring to the 'case' of letters used by printing press operators and the upper part of the case and lower part of the case to store the letters.

This got me thinking about what other terms have a long history hiding in plain sight. Wikipedia has a list dedicated to the subject: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_computer_term_etymologies

I'm just going to pick out a few favourites:

Cursor

Cursor is Latin for 'runner.' A cursor is the name given to the transparent slide engraved with a hairline that is used for marking a point on a slide rule. The term was then transferred to computers through analogy.

Dashboard

Originally, the word dashboard applied to a barrier of wood or leather fixed at the front of a horse-drawn carriage or sleigh to protect the driver from mud or other debris "dashed up" (thrown up) by the horses' hooves.

Patch

Historically, software suppliers distributed patches on paper tape or on punched cards, expecting the recipient to cut out the indicated part of the original tape (or deck), and patch in (hence the name) the replacement segment.

Ping

The author of ping, Mike Muuss, named it after the pulses of sound made by a sonar called a "ping".

How I learned to stop worrying about the margins and love the gap

Matt Coady — Tue, 04 May 2021 15:51:11 +0000

We've all been in that situation where you're making a navbar or footer that contains multiple action components, like links and whatnot. You're going to need to add a little space between the items so often your first thought is to reach for margins.

    <nav>
      <a href="#" class="button">Home</a>
      <a href="#" class="button">About</a>
      <a href="#" class="button">Portfolio</a>
      <a href="#" class="button">Contact</a>
    </nav>

.button {
  margin-left: 10px;
}

You might even need a little pseudo style to leave the last item unaffected

.button {
  margin-left: 10px;
}

.button:last-child {
  margin-left: 0;
}

Ever since the introduction of gap in css grids and shortly after flexbox, we can hoist this layout concern to the parent... where it should be:

nav {
  display: flex;
  gap: 10px;
}

Now nav takes full responsibly of the spacing and you can drop anything into the contents of nav, spaced out and ready to go.

This technique is particularly useful in the world of reusable React components where a general use wrapper component can take any child component, render it and space it without the child component being concerned with its own layout.