Abstraction:

1. The extent of generalization necessary to make a square peg look like a round hole.
2. Slight-of-Hand technique used by programmers to fool clients into thinking they understand the problem domain.
3. The recognition that clients will not pay for art, but will pay for a critique of it.

Account:

1. Discrete reckoning of monies or values obfuscated in the most complex structure possible as means of disorienting both auditors and rivals for the CFO’s position.
2. A written inventory of actions taken or transactions completed: as is a deposition to investigators, or the curious entries that spawned such investigations.
3. The tally of who owes what, and to whom; wielded as managerial weapon to deny an upgrade of those excellent PC-ATs, or to approve the executive offsite meeting at Pebble Beach.

Some accounts are not kept in any books…

Add-In:

1. Programming afterthought, wedged into an application between acceptance-testing and roll-out.
2. Often the most critical application artifact or process, overlooked in the comprehensive requirements analysis by all parties and forgotten until sign-off.
3. That little additional program or utility comprising the requirements and resources equal to twice the planned budget and schedule of the current development project, requested by the most politically-connected corporate officer who has no stake in the success or failure of the project.
4. Most-often cited reason programmers enter rehab.

Agile:

1. The art of explaining mistakes like they were planned.
2. A dystopic management method capable of luring maverick developers; using invented language and radical sounding concepts, coaxing the unwary into the dry gulch where the verb-form of the idiom++ can occur.
3. A property of youthful exuberance demanded for the inexperienced, desired by the trapped, and unnecessary for the aged and wise.
4. The belief, passed off as a project management approach, that one can predict the exact project cost, precise delivery date, and specific project deliverables… right at the very end of the project.

++ To ambush a four-flusher with a posse by getting the drop on ’em.

Agile Coach:

Demonstration of a previously-unknown grammatic “tic” whereby the use of certain nouns negates the meaning of the adjective that precedes it.

A coach in the sense that of:

• If you can’t do, manage.
• If you can’t manage, teach.
• If you can’t teach, coach.
• And if you can’t make any sense at all, Agile Certification is for you.

Algorithm:

1. A set of finite steps necessary to satisfy a client’s infinite expectations.
2. Poorly conceived solutions to mathematical problems that exchange a computer’s nearly endless patience for a programmer’s nearly bottomless ignorance. 
3. A series or pattern of instructions, repeated endlessly until bad data are converted into good reports.

I got data
I got coding.
Algorithm, who could ask for anything more?

Analysis:

1. Managerial step in design where facts are tossed and budget and schedule are solely considered.
2. Reducing a set of requirements to fit a predetermined objective.
3. Formal process of reviewing, in detail, all aspects of the known and unknown properties and characteristics of a plan in an attempt to incorporate the usable and isolate the unusable, define a product and detail a project.
4. Rhymes with Orange.

Annotation:

1. The most important and least understood aspect of modern languages, signifying the most momentous class extensions via the least significant visual indicators. 
2. A coding precept analogous to whether the flower is over the Tahitian Maiden’s left or right ear.
3. The asterisk aside Barry Bonds’ Home Run Record.

Apprentice:

1. The subordinate of a practicing pair in a guild system, as is black magic or programming. 
2. The often-smarter of a professional pair — and certainly the more agile — acquired for plasticity of mind and endurance of spirit; enticed to labor without acclaim by the promise of public insignificance when compared to the craftsman.

Everyone is an apprentice and everyone is a craftsman. It is not a question of whether, but to whom.

Application Programmers Interface (API):

1. The portion of a black box function or service provided to developers.
2. Acronym for “this is easy” in programmer.
3. The portion of the functional iceberg which can be seen, warning the developer of the massive submerged portion of the logic on which the developer will blythely buckle the project hull of his unsinkable application.

Architecture:

1. A discipline taught in schools that cannot be learned in class: that other people’s ideas are like prisons and even the most sanguine personality will eventually reject the least of limitations. 
2. The project role often held by inexperienced but certified administrators whose magic wand derives unlimited functionality from limited resources and whose forceful will contains all dynamic systems withing static boundaries. 
3. Impersonating deity by creating a theoretical playground, using conceptual models, with parenthetical data, for pathological users, within critical time-frames, without the burden of funding, while avoiding any exertion, under imperious oversight.

In building, Frank Lloyd Wright was the greatest known architect.
The question is whether software has more in common with aircraft accidents or Jackson Pollack paintings.

Artificial Intelligence:

1. A formal discipline that infers, by antonymic modifier, the existence of natural intelligence.
2. Always-incomplete demonstration of our understanding of intelligence.
3. In reality, Automated Interpretation, but having any intelligence in the organization, even automated, makes us look better.

ASP:

1. The species of venomous snake attributed with causing Cleopatra’s death.
2. The species of web development platform attributed with countless thousands of web site deaths.

Assembly:

1. Overloaded term indicating structure, but better interpreted with the same confidence as one should have for the fundament of quick-sand. 
2. In Jr High, they got us out of classes. In managed-code languages, they put us in them.

Attribute:

1. v. To provide notation as to the source of information.
2. n. An annotation in C++.
3. The essence of what changes the flavor of the ice cream without changing it to something besides ice cream.
4. A brand on your code cattle.

Azure

1. adj- The color of the deep blue sky, named for a semi-precious stone made of silicate with some iron disulfide.
2. n- A silicate collection made of marketing and fanfare, with some iron-oxide and copper, affixed with a name intended to obscure both structure and function.
3. n– The clear blue color of an unclouded sky.
4. paradox- A Microsoft™ cloud to obscure the fact that from inside, you can reach out, but you can’t touch; you can listen, but you won’t hear; and you can look, but you won’t see.

One day, my son, none of this will be yours.

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