Development terms and definitions reference

Question

Are there any good references for terms and expressions within development? I'm talking a site that defines patterns, terms, prefixes, suffixes and so on.

Definitions examples can be something like this:

• Factory
• Builder
• Parser
• Collection / List / Dictionary / Set
• Provider
• Expression

Something to refer to when you get into an argument like this:

A: I've created a ThingyBuilder.

B: That's not a Builder, it just parses XML, so it's a Parser.

A: But it parses it and builds an object from it!

Wikipedia and some pattern-site has some scattered information, but I wonder if there is any solid reference-pages.

Answer 1

The Microsoft patterns & practices team created an Application Architecture Guide which includes definitions for Application Archetypes and Design Fundamentals; however it doesn't focus on the definitions for patterns and other programming related terminology.

Answer 2

Two suggestions:

• http://martinfowler.com/bliki/
• http://mindprod.com/jgloss/jgloss.html

Go to Martin Fowler's Bliki for high design definition, and use JGloss for more low level definition used in programming.

Answer 3

The most important reference for patterns is "Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object-Oriented Software" by Gamma, Helm, Johnson and Vilssides (the "Gang of Four"). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_Patterns_%28book%29

Lists, Sets, and Collections all have specific meanings in the Java world - and the Java API defines them. http://java.sun.com/j2se/1.5.0/docs/api/ Such terms can have slightly different semantics in other places.

Expression is typically related to language syntax. If you want an accurate understanding of, say, a java expression, you'll need to see the Java language specification (Chapter 15). http://java.sun.com/docs/books/jls/