iOS App Store Anniversary: We Talk Bugs, Bytes & Tech-Term Origins

It was July 10, 2008. Many posts today are going to look at the launch of the iOS App Store and how it revolutionized the way we interact with technology.

App Store, is really an invention first introduced in 1992. The word is short for "Application Storefront". The invention required an installed application to securely handle transfer, purchase and installation. iPhone made other tech terms like "Jailbreak" household words and reminds us of many terms that have fascinating origins.

This post is about the funny words we say everyday but never knew the origin. If you have some others to share, post them in the comments below!

Computer is a job title. Really. Human "computers" worked in teams of calculators, processing complex math by breaking problems into components that could be independently calculated and compiled together. These people were smart.

Bug refers to a fault in computer software, but it originally was a hardware problem —and was literally...a bug. Just before silicon—in 1947, the Harvard Mark II, a super-fast binary machine, which was built after the great and powerful ENIAC (completed in 1945) also relied on electromagnetic relays as bits of memory, experienced a problem. Calculations came out wrong. Finding this fault would have been quite hard to do, and painstakingly time consuming. I guess Grace Hopper and her team were frustrated, but still, it's kinda gross to tape the poor thing onto the daily logs like that.

Spam is unwanted food. It's from a Monte Python Sketch. Yes, that's true! The term "spam" for unwanted emails and messages does indeed originate from Monty Python. A group of diners in a restaurant is unable to avoid dishes with Spam. The constant and unwanted presence of Spam in the sketch became a metaphor. It was humor adopted by early (read: geeky) internet users to describe unwanted, repetitive, and annoying messages. NOTE: The programming language "Python" is also named after the British comedy group, not the snake. I guess early internet pioneers like Monte Python. Pining for the Fjords, Knights who say Ni!, and so forth.

Bit is not a little piece of something; it is actually a concatenation of "binary digit," abbreviated as "bit," and stands for the smallest unit of data in computing.

Byte is not a funny way to spell "bite"; it's not for "bite size" it is a concatenation of "binary term" and typically consists of 8 bits—7 bits of information to form a "Word" or "Term" and 1 for parity check (for those who are counting).

Algorithm is actually named after mathematician who was instrumental in the development of algebra. Al-Khwarizmi used systematic methods for solving linear and quadratic equations, which is basically computer algebra. His name was Latinized to "Algoritmi," from which the term "algorithm" is derived.

Cursor is literally Latin for "runner," and was coined by William T. Wulf in the 1960s to describe a moving indicator onscreen. The cursor has become a fundamental element of the user interface used ever-since as a computer term, not a foot race.

Daemon is spelled this way to avoid negative connotations and was coined by programmers at MIT in the 1960s. It refers to background processes running without user interaction, named after the helpful spirits from Greek mythology.

Icon is the small pictorial representations in graphical interfaces and was popularized by Xerox PARC (Palo Alto Research Center) in the 1970s. The term "icon" itself comes from the Greek word "eikon," meaning image or likeness. The idea was to make computer interactions more intuitive by using visual symbols.

Worm is from a sci-fi book. The word was popularized by John F. Shoch and Jon A. Hupp at Xerox PARC in 1979. The word is from John Brunner's 1975 sci-fi novel "The Shockwave Rider.", they used it to describe self-replicating programs that spread across networks.

Fortran, although not a household word is really funny because it stands for Formula-Translator for its ability to simplify and organize machine language instructions. Another note, BASIC is an acronym. It stands for Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code. Whereas "C" language was the named successor to the earlier "B" language. Really, you can't make this stuff up.

Mainframe comes from the combination of "main" (indicating primary or central) and "frame" (referring to the large physical structure that housed the computer's components). The term was coined in the 1950s to describe large, central computers used primarily by large organizations for bulk data processing.

Cookies on web browsers were originally called "breadcrumbs," like Hansel and Gretel's trail. Most early browsers like Mosaic and ViolaWWW didn't store user data at all and "breadcrumbs" seemed like unwanted leftovers. By 1994, Netscape introduced cookies, making them sound more appealing and the standard took off. Of course, you want to accept cookies!

Software is derived from "soft" to contrast with the "hard" of "hardware," which refers to the physical computer. It's a uniquely computer term coined by John Tukey in 1958. He used it to distinguish between the physical hardware of a computer and the intangible programs and data that run on it.

There you have it, this might not be what makes all software engineering groups take off and —Go Beyond...but sometimes you just need to have a little fun.

Thanks and let us know what funny words were missed!