As I used to be having a dialogue with another designers and engineers on my crew, it occurred to me that there are sometimes turns of phrase we use that outsiders may discover odd. Listed here are a number of I may consider:

The place does X reside?

Once we ask the place one thing lives, we’re often asking the place we will discover a explicit file, asset, or operate throughout the entirety of the property, scripts, code, and so forth. within the venture. Relying on the context, the reply may very well be a single file, a folder throughout the venture tree, a line in code or script, or one thing else.

“X land” (e.g. “That operate lives in C++ land”)

The final a part of the venture that handles a specific factor. Associated to the place issues “reside”, a “land” is a extra generalized location. If a specific little bit of logic lives in “script”, it might ship messages to C++ land – that’s, a specific little bit of script might name C++ capabilities. Telling somebody that one thing “lives in X land” means they received’t discover the definition the place they’re trying, and gives some context as to the place to look.

Damaged

This really has nothing to do with sport steadiness more often than not. 9 instances out of ten, “damaged” implies that the latest model of the sport ({that a} explicit individual pulled) doesn’t work for some cause, often as a result of some mixture of the checked-in information and property trigger both a crash or laborious lock someplace. Often that is due to anyone forgot to examine a standard case, or forgot to examine in a file together with the others. Being damaged is the worst state for anyone to be in, since they can’t work. If many individuals on the crew are damaged, it’s a fireplace that wants preventing.

Firefighting

Engaged on surprising excessive precedence duties that aren’t a part of the usually assigned workload, usually to assist different devs who’re damaged get un-broken.

Blocked

Not fairly the identical as Damaged, blocked simply implies that a job has a dependency that hasn’t been accomplished but. If all of somebody’s duties are blocked, they’re successfully damaged.

Downstream/Upstream

A lot of the time, we’ve got to work in numerous branches of a specific depot – particularly if we’re engaged on content material that can go reside in numerous content material updates. When adjustments from one department are built-in to a different department, the goal department is “downstream” from the supply department, which is “upstream” from the goal department. Often in these conditions, nearly all of the integrations are one-directional for the reason that upstream department wants to take care of stability so it doesn’t take the riskier and fewer steady check-ins from downstream.

Speak about/Take it Offline

This really means “let’s focus on this later”. Often used to desk a dialogue on a subject introduced up at a gathering so we don’t waste the time of different folks on the assembly who aren’t concerned.

X Full

This implies the venture has reached the state the place the management will now not settle for new Xs – options, property, content material, code, and so forth. We are able to nonetheless repair points with, tune, and iterate on the prevailing Xs we’ve began, however we can’t add new Xs anymore. Often goes within the order of function, then asset, and eventually code.

X Freeze/Lock

A extra superior model of X Full, a function/asset/code Lock implies that no checkins of that sort are allowed with out specific authorization. The venture has reached the stage the place stability is paramount. Because of this solely particular check-ins which were vetted by the senior engineers are allowed in. Follows the identical order as X full. As soon as code freeze is said, we’re within the closing stretch – the one aim from then on is to get a submission candidate.

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