Use this cheat sheet when speaking with developers

Use this cheat sheet when speaking with developers

Have you ever had a conversation with a web developer and wondered if you’re speaking the same language?

Acronyms and phrases can help to talk about things more concisely amongst co-workers, but it can also make it harder for those looking to collaborate cross-functionally.

If you’ve ever looked into making changes to your website or business tools, you may have noticed just how littered web development is with this jargon. As a developer/designer, myself, I have to confess that it’s hard to avoid this language while working on websites.

But that doesn’t mean you have to be totally left in the dark! I’ve put together this high-level list of some of the shorthand your web developer will likely use. Hopefully, this will help you better guide and understand the conversation so you can make sure your website is working for you!

Tech Stack

The tech stack is the selection of tools and programming languages used to build a website or product. You might need to know this when hiring someone to join your development team as not all developers are familiar with the same tools/languages.

GIT / Repo / Repository

GIT is a technology used by developers to handle version control. Version control is kind of like your code history. This helps teams to work together on a project and merge their contributions together without overriding each other’s code or limiting the team to a single file.

The project files in GIT are usually referred to as a repository or repo for short. You might also hear of Github and GitLab. These are services that host repositories.

API / SDK

API stands for application programming interface. These are usually needed to bring data from another service like Twitter into your website or product. For example, let’s say you want to personalize your app’s welcome page with the local weather. You would need to use a local weather API to feed this data into the app.

You might also see SDK used in a similar fashion as this refers to a ‘software developer kit’, which is just a set of tools used to interact with an API.

CMS

Content Management Systems: they do what they say on the tin… and sometimes more.

In their simplest form, they offer a user-friendly way to manage a database of content, like WordPress. However, content management systems come in all shapes and sizes specializing in more niche requirements from content monetization and eCommerce to managing video games or a micro-brewery.

A11Y

A11Y or Accessibility is simply making something available to as wide an audience as possible regardless of their difficulties. Supporting screen readers, considering color blindness, or accounting for users with very slow internet speeds are some examples of this.

The 11 in a11y corresponds to the 11 characters between a and y in “accessibility”.

CDN

CDN stands for Content Delivery Network. CDN’s are services that help to get assets to users as fast as possible regardless of where they are in the world. This is most often used with images as they’re usually what slow down pages the most.

Jamstack

Many web applications require a server to operate and manage the site. Jamstack simplifies the steps required to set up these systems. They do this by managing or taking control of the most complex parts of the system.

This is why you might see developers advocating for Jamstack as it means they can build complex web applications much faster than they used to. This enables a smaller team or single developer to achieve what used to require multiple people.

Frontend / Backend

Code can be run in one of two places: on the server for your website (backend), or on your user’s computer (frontend). In some cases, there are benefits to running your code on frontend vs. backend. But for other things there are requirements (see the next section). Often requirements are around security reasons or tech limitations (i.e. a language isn’t used on your user’s computer).

Server side / Client side

These refer to the places where code can be run. To run on the client side means it is sent to a user’s computer and will run on the frontend of a website. To run on the server means it will be run on a server you operate for the backend.

Keep in mind that there are some things that you just can’t run on the frontend. For example, when working with WordPress is written in PHP, a language that doesn’t run on the user’s computer. A server is required so that it can handle the code, and then send the user’s browser code that it can run.

Perf

Simply, performance. How fast does this run? How efficient is it?

If code takes longer than it should to run or requires more resources, it can have a negative impact on cost, or the user’s experience. This is a major factor when considering how SEO ready your site is which you can read more about here.

That’s about it!

This is obviously not an exhaustive list, but these are the terms your most likely to come up against in a conversation with your developer. My hope is that knowing these terms helps you to be more in control of your project so you can better collaborate with the tech team you’re working with.

Did I miss anything? Let me know if I can help with any other web dev translations. 🤓