Questions tagged [etymology]
Etymology is the study of the history of words, their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time.
25 questions
-3 votes
1 answer
300 views
What does the filename "gmon.out" stand for?
The GNU compiler toolset has a profiler "gprof" for performance analysis of C++ programs. With the -pg switch, the gcc compiler will make executables that write a data file, "gmon.out&...
4 votes
1 answer
813 views
What does "alloca" stand for?
The alloca() function allocates memory in the stack frame of the caller. What did alloca originally stand for? Are there any sources regarding the etymology of the name?
- 579
0 votes
1 answer
406 views
Why are "fields" are called that?
Those textboxes, datepickers, textareas, etc... or DB fields. Does anyone know the etymology of it? Why those are "fields"? Is it because a field is an open space area that has no trees ...
- 21
3 votes
1 answer
437 views
Why the names Omega and Theta in Big Omega and Big Theta?
There was a question asking what the "O" stands for in "Big O", the answer to which seems to be "Ordnung von"/"order of". I wonder what's the origin of the ...
- 791
31 votes
7 answers
13k views
Why is it called a "trap" instruction?
To execute a system call, a program must execute a special trap instruction. Why is it called a "trap" instruction? What is the etymology of this usage of the word "trap"? Is it ...
- 419
43 votes
7 answers
18k views
Software bug vs. software corruption
While investigating Wikipedia article on Qantas Flight 72 I've found "Potential trigger types" section that says (emphasis mine): A number of potential trigger types were investigated, ...
- 2,416
16 votes
5 answers
5k views
Can every language be categorized as either compiled or interpreted? [duplicate]
As per Wikipedia: A compiled language is a programming language whose implementations are typically compilers (translators that generate machine code from source code). And an interpreted language is ...
- 898
4 votes
1 answer
705 views
Why is it called "game day"? [closed]
At several companies the term "game day" is used to mean testing functionality of a product in a production (or similar) environment. Specifically, testing a that an intended mechanism works as ...
- 167
5 votes
3 answers
468 views
Etymology of "static" functions
I get why static local variables are called "static" -- we want them to be allocated in static memory! But what is the reason for calling functions and variables we want restricted to the current file ...
3 votes
1 answer
284 views
Why the name MailboxProcessor in F#?
It seems that the standard practice is to immediately alias MailboxProcessor<'T> to Agent<'T>. So why the name in the first place anyways? Why don't they just call it Agent<'T>, if ...
- 791
4 votes
1 answer
617 views
Etymology of (function) overloading
Where does the phrase "overload" come from? It's interesting to see the translation of the term in different languages (e.g. list of Wikipedia articles about overloading), some languages translate it ...
- 151
13 votes
4 answers
22k views
What does the "t" in int32_t signify?
In C, what meaning, if any does the t at the end of integer types like uint8_t and int32_t have? Where did it originate? Why wasn't the type just called int32?
- 241
3 votes
1 answer
1k views
What is the etymology of the "dot" operator for string concatenation?
Some languages have a . operator for string concatenation. The oldest language I could find that supports it is Perl. Was Perl the first to use it? Why was it chosen?
- 470
3 votes
1 answer
167 views
What is the origin of the phrase "extirpated as a potential munition"
I recently came across this statement in the Perl documentation: extirpated as a potential munition derived from the sentence: "Creates a digest string exactly like the crypt(3) function in the C ...
- 141
4 votes
2 answers
354 views
Etymology of 'virtual' (method/method table/inheritance)
As far as I know, it generally refers to late or dynamic bindng. So why a word like late or dynamic wasn't used?
- 198