Downscope

Development & Operations Terms

DevOps - Development Operations; the practice of combining software development and IT operations to shorten development cycles and provide continuous delivery

Infra - Infrastructure; the hardware, software, networks, facilities used to develop, test, deliver, monitor, and support IT services

SRE - Site Reliability Engineer; focuses on availability, latency, performance, and capacity of software systems

Deployment - The process of releasing software to production environments

Hackathon - Time-constrained competitive event where people collaborate on software projects

PR - Pull Request; a method of submitting code changes for review before merging into the main codebase

Commit - Saving changes to code in a version control system with a unique identifier

Frontend Technologies

Astro - High-performance web framework focused on content-driven websites with minimal JavaScript by default

React - JavaScript library for building user interfaces, especially single-page applications

Vite - Modern frontend build tool and development server with fast hot module replacement

TypeScript - Strongly-typed programming language that builds on JavaScript, providing type safety

Tailwind CSS - Utility-first CSS framework for rapidly building custom user interfaces

ShadCN - Component library built on Radix UI primitives with Tailwind CSS styling

Tools & Technologies

Slack - Business messaging platform for team communication

Signal - Encrypted messaging app, more secure than standard messaging platforms

Zoom - Video conferencing platform

Jira - Project management software used for issue tracking and task management

GitHub/Git - Code repository and version control system

Terminal/Command Line - Text interface for entering commands directly to a computer

VS Code - Popular code editor developed by Microsoft

Kubernetes/k8s - Container orchestration system for automating software deployment and scaling

  • kubectl - Command-line tool for controlling Kubernetes clusters

AWS/GCP - Amazon Web Services/Google Cloud Platform; cloud computing services

Terraform - Infrastructure as Code tool to provision and manage cloud resources

Figma - Collaborative interface design tool

Notion - All-in-one workspace that combines notes, tasks, wikis, and databases

AI & Machine Learning

LLM - Large Language Model; AI systems trained on vast text data to generate human-like text

ChatGPT/Claude - Popular AI assistants built on LLM technology

AI APIs - Application Programming Interfaces that allow software to access AI capabilities

Generative AI - AI systems that can create new content (text, images, code, etc.)

Prompt Engineering - The process of designing inputs to get optimal outputs from AI systems

Programming Terms

IAM - Identity and Access Management; controls who can access what resources

Backend/Frontend - Server-side vs. user interface parts of applications

API - Application Programming Interface; allows different software to communicate

Authentication - Verifying identity (who someone is)

Authorization - Determining access rights (what they can do)

Pipeline - A set of automated processes for delivering software

Production/Staging - Live vs. testing environments for software

Regression - A bug that breaks previously working functionality

Corporate Tech Culture

Standup - Brief daily meeting where team members share progress and blockers

Visibility - How noticeable someone’s work is to management and colleagues

Technical Debt - The implied cost of future rework caused by choosing quick solutions now

Scope - The defined features and functions of a project

Cross-functional - Involving people from different teams or specialties

On-call - Being available to respond to incidents outside normal working hours

OKRs - Objectives and Key Results; goal-setting framework used in tech companies

Ship It - To release or deploy a product or feature