Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.
Questions tagged [etymology]
24 questions
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votes
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Etymology of "String"
So it's obvious that a string of things is a sequence of things, and so a sequence of characters/bytes/etc. might as well be called a string. But who first called them strings? And when? And in what context such that it stuck around? I've always…
sclv
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What is language-agnosticism and why is it called that?
When is something language agnostic? Why is it called that?
Louis Rhys
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44
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6 answers
Why do we call it "production"?
A coworker was wondering this today: "Why is it that in our industry 'production' means 'final, deliverable product'? You know, like if a movie is 'in production', it means they're currently filming it, not that that it's done and audiences are…
joshjs
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Software bug vs. software corruption
While investigating Wikipedia article on Qantas Flight 72 I've found "Potential trigger types" section that says (emphasis mine):
A number of potential trigger types were investigated, including software bugs, software corruption, hardware faults,…
trejder
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Why is it called a "trap" instruction?
To execute a system call, a program must execute a special trap
instruction.
Why is it called a "trap" instruction? What is the etymology of this usage of the word "trap"?
Is it related to the usual English word trap? Is something is getting…
littleO
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Why is XML not called EML?
From Wikipedia
Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a set of rules for encoding documents in machine-readable form. It is defined in the XML 1.0 Specification[4] produced by the W3C, and several other related specifications, all gratis open…
Raynos
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Can every language be categorized as either compiled or interpreted?
As per Wikipedia: A compiled language is a programming language whose implementations are typically compilers (translators that generate machine code from source code). And an interpreted language is a type of programming language for which most of…
Sisir
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Why is the output of a compiler called object code?
From the essay Programming Languages Explained by Paul Graham, published in Hackers & Painters:
The high-level language that you feed the compiler is also known as
source code, and the machine language translation it generates is called object…
Michiel van Oosterhout
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What does the "t" in int32_t signify?
In C, what meaning, if any does the t at the end of integer types like uint8_t and int32_t have? Where did it originate? Why wasn't the type just called int32?
ahalekelly
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In pair programming, what is each role named, and why?
I've heard the person at the keyboard named the "driver", and the other person named the "navigator". I've imagined rally car racers, where the person at the wheel just cannot keep up with everything that's happening, and they must have the help of…
lance
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What does "proxy to" mean?
I keep coming across the word "proxy" used as a verb in tutorials, etc. Usually something will "proxy to" something else. What does this mean?
Having spent some time googling for what it means in a programming context, I mostly found "proxy server"…
user25791
5
votes
3 answers
Etymology of "static" functions
I get why static local variables are called "static" -- we want them to be allocated in static memory! But what is the reason for calling functions and variables we want restricted to the current file "static"? I don't see the connection; either…
Elliot Gorokhovsky
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Etymology of (function) overloading
Where does the phrase "overload" come from?
It's interesting to see the translation of the term in different languages (e.g. list of Wikipedia articles about overloading), some languages translate it directly (in the meaning of "to put too much…
hunyadym
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Etymology of 'virtual' (method/method table/inheritance)
As far as I know, it generally refers to late or dynamic bindng. So why a word like late or dynamic wasn't used?
Andrey Moiseev
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What does "alloca" stand for?
The alloca() function allocates memory in the stack frame of the caller. What did alloca originally stand for? Are there any sources regarding the etymology of the name?
Jo Liss
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