Understanding software development vocabulary

When you're not a developer, it can sometimes be hard to understand what the tech team is talking about...

Of course, part of a dev's job is also to make their work understandable in a way that's accessible to everyone, but that's not always easy, especially when there are a lot of technical terms.

So I decided to explain 15 vocabulary words you probably hear every day without necessarily fully understanding them.

A server

A server is a specialized machine (let's say a computer without a screen or keyboard) connected to a network to process data, perform operations, and send new information back to the client.

The term "server" is also used for the software side running on these machines. For example, there are file servers, whose purpose is to take a URL and return the corresponding file, or web servers that receive an HTTP request in order to return a web page.

IP Address

An IP address is literally an address (it can look like 192.168.0.1 or 2001:0db8:0000:85a3:0000:0000:ac1f:8001) so that one machine can find another one on the network.

Just as your house can sit at the intersection of several streets, and thus have several valid addresses, a machine can be part of several networks and therefore have several IP addresses depending on which network you're looking at.

Proxy

This is a bit of a shorthand for a "proxy server", a machine acting as an intermediary between a client machine and a network. Proxy servers are notably used to provide the following functions:

• Filtering ads or heavy or inappropriate content, etc...
• Modifying or masking location to bypass certain restrictions
• Anonymizing browsing
• ...

VPN

VPN stands for (Virtual Private Network) and is a network that your machine connects to, which allows hiding the network your machine is actually connected to. This virtual network can simply serve as an extra layer of security, or it can be used to "be anonymous" or make a server believe you're located in a different geographic location.

API

Short for Application Programming Interface, it's a kind of toolbox that simplifies software development by giving access to certain features without you needing to understand how they work internally.

The API defines the type of information it can receive, what it will return, and the various possible operations.

To put it simply, the buttons on your oven are kind of like the API that simplifies communication with your oven — by turning the thermostat, you perform an action that makes sense to you, without having to calculate what voltage needs to run through the heating element to get the right temperature.

Front-End / Back-End

The front-end is the visible part of the iceberg, it's the graphical interface of the application as well as all the code used to manage the interactions with that interface.

The back-end is the entire part that handles data processing, calculations, database storage, etc...

The back-end code runs on the server (hidden), while the front-end code is downloaded by the client's browser and then executed (can be made public).

Back-Office (or CMS)

Not to be confused with the back-end, the back-office is the administrable part of a platform. It's also called a CMS, for "Content Management System" — this is the interface where you configure all the content of your platform: products, text, images, etc...

Cookies

Cookies are pieces of data left by a website on a user's browser for purposes such as storage, identification, or tracking, for example.

No-Code

No-code is a product development method based on tools that can be mastered without any technical skills, such as Webflow, Wix, Glide, or Wordpress.com

A Stack

A stack is a stack of technologies on which a project is based. There's no official specification — when talking about a stack, it can include languages, frameworks, libraries, etc... It's an unspoken convention among tech teams used to quickly and roughly describe a project's makeup.

Some stacks are even known by their acronyms, such as:

• LAMP for Linux Apache MySQL and PHP
• MEAN for MongoDB Express Angular and NodeJS
• ...

Describing a stack is a bit like describing a sandwich!

Framework

Sometimes also called a "cadre applicatif" in French, a framework is a software tool that allows applications to be developed in a consistent way, because it provides a structure to follow during development.

These are often complex tools in their internal structure, so much so that a developer can take several years to fully master a framework and its ecosystem.

If the tool doesn't provide a structure to follow but instead simply offers tools for the developer to use freely to make their job easier, it's referred to as a library instead.

Integration

Integration most often refers to the "graphical" integration of a mockup created (most of the time) by a designer into a page (of an app or website) built with code by a developer or an integrator.

Note that even though the integrator role is becoming less common in the web world, some are still specialized in what's called "pixel-perfect" integration, which refers to matching the original mockup down to the pixel.

Git

Git is a code management and backup tool that allows several people to work simultaneously on a project, and/or to create multiple versions of the same project.

Not to be confused with Github, which is a platform managed by Microsoft for storing your Git projects!

Repo / Repository

Short for "repository", translated into French as "dépôt", it's the central point where a project's source code is stored so it can be accessed by developers at any time and make their collaboration easier.

Repos are accessible through code management tools like Git, SVN, and Mercurial, for example.

Commit

A commit is the equivalent of pressing the "save" key on your Word document, but for a whole set of files in a project, managed by a code management tool.

The tool will create a new version of the code, which can then either be added to the application's central "repository," or discarded if that version contained an error.