Tagged Questions
4
votes
1answer
62 views
Provenance of 'deprecated' (in the programming sense)
What are some early uses of "deprecation" in computer science? When did the word enter common usage in the field of programming? Are there any particularly well-known examples of early deprecations ...
3
votes
1answer
128 views
Is “catenate” used in IT parlance?
When I was doing my IT degree in the 80s we learned that, in programming terms, concatenation was the act of joining two strings together.
Recently I was reading a technical manual and came across ...
4
votes
4answers
655 views
What does the word “hacking” or “hacker” come from? [closed]
Is there a history behind the word "hacker" and "hacking"?
Could it have anything to do with "hashing" i.e. using a hash function?
-1
votes
1answer
138 views
Why is it correct to say “to negate a double”? [closed]
In programming you can negate a double. At least Google hits tend to that, but there are, though, a lot of hits for invert a double.
While the definition of to invert is clear
to invert:
to ...
8
votes
1answer
307 views
What do you call the phenomenon where a rectangle ΝΏ is shown because a font lacks a glyph?
Is there a name to describe the situation where a particular character is shown on a computer screen in a particular font, but this font does not have a glyph for this particular character?
Usually, ...
5
votes
3answers
725 views
How do you pronounce “cURL,” the computer utility? [closed]
Are there programmers here? I'd like to know how you guys pronounce cURL.
Because I don't live in a country that uses English, I haven't heard it yet.
5
votes
4answers
664 views
What's the origin of “beta” to describe a “user-testing” phase of computer development?
It occurred to me that I use the term "beta" to describe a "release candidate" of a computer product that has passed all expectations of the development team, and is now being given limited exposure ...
38
votes
3answers
1k views
How “macro” in computer programming came about
The prefix macro- is normally used for large things like macroeconomics and macroscopic. How did it come to be used to describe text macros in the programming world?
4
votes
3answers
503 views
What is the origin of != in the meaning “not equal to”?
As a programmer I have always assumed that using != as meaning not equal to when writing text (usually on the internet) came from programming languages. Is this true or is the origin different?
