Mike Dunn wonders what the Microspeak term parking lot means. I'm not familiar with this term either, and the first document I turned up during my search was a PowerPoint presentation that said "Avoid using Microsoft jargon terms, such as parking lot and dogfood." Yeah, that wasn't much help. From what I can gather, the term parking lot starte...
The Merriam-Webster dictionary gives as the meaning of scope as a verb to look at for evaluation, as in "to scope out the competition." But that's not how we use it at Microsoft. Here are some fake citations: The Widgets pop-up shows the available widgets scoped to the current selection. The results of the search are scoped to the current fold...
In physics, friction is a force that resists motion. In Microspeak, friction is an obstacle which prevents somebody from doing something you want them to do. (The preferred verb phrase for getting over an obstacle is overcoming friction.) There is friction in the system for X that is reduced when developing with Y. Using X reduces friction of so...
In Microspeak, fit is a predicate noun which is never used on its own but always comes with a modifying adjective. For something to be a good fit is for something to be appropriate or suitable for a particular situation. The opposite of a good fit is not a bad fit, because that's pejorative. Rather, something that is not a good fit is referred to ...
Reader laonianren wanted to know more about this game Walls and Ladders. "Walls and Ladders" is not a game. It's just a metaphor for a conflict in which one side wants to perform some action and the other side wants to prevent it. The defending side builds a wall, and the attacking side builds a taller ladder. In response, the defending side bui...
Sure, any noun can be verbed, and any verb can be nouned. But today, we're going to noun an adjective. I have no written citations of this usage; the only report was via a colleague who overheard it in a hallway conversion. I had some offlines with Fred about that. In Microspeak, offline is an adjective which means "outside this meeting." In or...
In mathematics, a level set is the set of points at which a function takes a particular value. This has nothing to do with the way the term is used at Microsoft. In fact, the way the term is used at Microsoft, I have no idea what it means. But here are citations. The first is from an upper-level executive: Before we start the meeting, let me leve...
Bug jail is not a place where bugs are sent as punishment for their crimes. Rather, it's a (virtual) place that developers are sent when they have too many bugs. Project management establishes some maximum number of bugs (known as a bug cap) each developer is permitted to have on his or her plate, and developers whose bug count exceeds the specif...
In its most general sense, the term bug farm refers to something that is a rich source of bugs. It is typically applied to code which is nearly unmaintainable. Code can arrive in this state through a variety of means. The term is most often used as a cautionary term, calling attention to areas where there is high risk that code you're about to ...
The shifting meaning.
