Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by edw519 5630 days ago
Cloud Computing - A term, like "world peace", "think outside the box", or "hooking up", that means everything and nothing at the same time.

Fourth General Languages (4GLs) - Technology to enable non-programmers to claim that they are programmers.

eXtensible Mark-up Language (XML) - Primary data, along with secondary data needed to describe the primary data, all in one file, that a receiving program could act upon, as long as it knew what the secondary data meant.

Unified Modeling Language (UML) - Technology needed to add another layer of personnel to enterprise IT: people smart enough to draw but not smart enough to program.

Agile Software Development - A new name for what the fittest have used to survive for 50 years.

NoSQL - The Y2K of the 21st century, without the hard deadline. Everything will die, but no one can say why.

Object-Oriented Programming (OOP) - A technology invented to make associates of Big 5 consulting firms who didn't know what they were doing appear as if they did.

Test Driven Development (TDD) - A fancy term given to tried and true methods just discovered by hipsters whose code didn't work.

Rapid Application Development - Prototyping. But no respectible IT person would buy a book with the word "Prototyping" in the title, hence the new name.

Web Frameworks - More software added to perfectly adequate existing software used by programmers depending upon their level of experience, backlog, or masochism.

Hacker - Either (a) One who breaks into other systems, (b) one who builds stuff, (c) a programmer, or (d) a groupie of one of the above.

4 comments

SOAP - Remote procedure calls (maybe) that use web frameworks and XML when I all really wanted was to know the latest user setting.

CORBA - Remote procedure calls (maybe) for object-oriented programmers who can't agree which language to use, but are expected to agree on how to represent it.

Design Patterns - What to use when your language isn't up for the task.

I feel your text for TDD and Agile is the same used to hype the terms by the proponents.
I've found that people tell me "You're not thinking outside the box" when they want me to accept something fundamentally untenable.
Tell them they're in the "outside the box" box[1]?

[1] http://lesswrong.com/lw/k6/the_outside_the_box_box/

I did not see "DSL" in your list.