Computer Science Glossary

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Endianness

Endianness refers to the sequential order used to numerically interpret a range of bytes in computer memory as a larger, composed word value. It also describes the order of byte transmission over a digital link. Words may be represented in big-endian or little-endian format, with the term "end" denoting the front end or start of the word, a nomenclature potentially counterintuitive given the connotation of "finish" or "final portion" associated with "end" as a stand-alone term in everyday language. When storing a word in big-endian format the most significant byte, which is the byte containing the most significant bit, is stored first and the following bytes are stored in decreasing significance order with the least significant byte, which is the byte containing the least significant bit, thus being stored at last place. Little-endian format reverses the order of the sequence and stores the least significant byte at the first location with the most significant byte being stored last. The order of bits within a byte can also have endianness (as discussed later); however, a byte is typically handled as a numerical value or character symbol and so bit sequence order is obviated.

Segfault

In computing, a segmentation fault (often shortened to segfault\ or access violation is a fault, or failure condition, raised by hardware with memory protection, notifying an operating system (OS) the software has attempted to access a restricted area of memory (a memory access violation).

Idempotence

"An HTTP method is idempotent if an identical request can be made once or several times in a row with the same effect while leaving the server in the same state. In other words, an idempotent method should not have any side-effects (except for keeping statistics)."

Code smell

"in computer programming, a code smell is any characteristic in the source code of a program that possibly indicates a deeper problem."

Debounce

"Debouncing is a programming practice used to ensure that time-consuming tasks do not fire so often, that it stalls the performance of the web page. In other words, it limits the rate at which a function gets invoked."

CWD (Current Working Directory)

The current working directory (CWD) is the directory in which a process is currently working. It is the default location for many file operations, such as saving a new file or searching for a file to open.