The language spoken by those in the development space can often seem completely foreign. There are so many acronyms and foreign terms that it is quite possible to sit in a meeting and not know what is going on. It can very easily be one of those situations where you know what all the words and letters are by themselves, but when you hear them together, they stop making sense.
Getting around this can be tricky, and in many ways if you are not able to pick up on the terms and phrases it can actually be quite career limiting. There are two ways around this; ask questions if you don’t know what is being said; or make notes and research hard. Either way, if you are new to the technology field and struggling to understand the lingo, here are a few tips and insights to help you busk your way.
It is not always an acronym
The coding and development landscapes are jampacked with acronyms, but every so often there are actual words that come along as well. Things like Python, Genie or Java are all words that traditionally mean something else put which have been used as names for coding languages. Or there is something like Microsoft’s Azure Desktop as a service that is a cloud-based platform used for remote testing and deployment of products.
It is quite easy to see why these terms could quite easily be misconstrued or incorrectly interpreted. Ten to fifteen years ago a Python developer was a person who bred snakes, it is all very different now.
Master the acronyms
So many acronyms, so little time. It is almost a case of as fast as you learn a new acronym so a hundred more are created. You are almost always behind the curve. The key here is to ask and to master the language of the specific field that you are working in. So, if for example you wanted to become an expert in Microsoft products, like the one mentioned above, then you would need to know what things like SaaS, PaaS and Iaas were.
And to save you having to look it up we will tell you… they stand for software as a service, platform as a service and infrastructure as a service respectively. It seems so easy when you have the details, but we know that it isn’t. Realistically it is all about how you deal with the navigation of the jargon.
Specialize
There are so many different areas in the coding and technical space that you must try and become an expert in a specific area. You need to avoid being a jack of all trades and a master of none. Rather know one area well, work on the jargon, stay up-to-date with all the latest tech developments and insights and be the go-to person at your place of work in that realm.
If you can get that right then you will find it all becomes quite easy to navigate the jargon highways as people will come to you for assistance in your area of excellence, meaning that you are free to go to them when the need arises to navigate a different area.