The Tech to English dictionary

A work in progress.

A

AI

• Artificially Inflated - The share prices of General Ai, LLM companies after the owners make outrageous claims of its iminent omnipotence
• Artificial Intelligence - Current term for generally available algorithmic Large Language Models that output convincing sounding garbage

B

Beautiful

A program or application stuffed with overcomplicated CSS, SCSS, Javascript and at least one framework that is inherently unusable to anyone but another programmer.

C

Computer

[1] Originally a women's role in programming complex electrical gizmos designed by men do something actually useful. See also Women in computing - Wikipedia.

[2] The term used to encapsulate the complex electrical gizmos based on vacuum tubes and transistors that the above used to programme.

D

Developer

AKA programmer and engineer - A male dominated job description for the people who make technology based on silicon chips do anything useful.

F

Framework

A system of building stuff that is supposed to make the thing portable and easy to maintain but invariably throws dependency errors the second you try setting-up on another machine.

G

GUI

Graphical User Interface - The GUI is to computers, Programs and Applications what the steering wheel and brakes are to a car. Get it right and you won't crash and burn. Get it wrong and, well...

H

Help

AKA documentation for programs and applications that have sub-optimal GUI and may also be marketed as beautiful and powerful

Hype

[1] See Artificially Inflated

[2] A way for the company to strip-mine investors of their money to feed the work and deprive equally deserving, more honest companies of potential development funds

Large Language Models

An algorithmic method of correlating data within vast databases. Also referred to Black Boxes because their logic is often opaque.

P

Personal Identifying Data (PII)

A commodity worth millions to marketers, multinational companies, criminal enterprises and intelligence agencies. It's also very valuable to the individuals it belongs to, but who cares about them?

Powerful

Overcomplicated and difficult to use.

See also Lifted

R

Red Bull

Energy drink you can throw at Developers if they're chasing you.

V

Virtual Machine (VM)

A way of running another computer within the existing computer which can often cost so much time and effort you might as well have bought a second computer in the first place.