Software Engineering Glossary

A

Android

Android is Google's mobile operating system, running on over 70% of the world's smartphones in 2026. For app developers it means Kotlin (the modern default), Jetpack Compose (the modern UI toolkit), and shipping to a wide spectrum of OEM devices, screen sizes, and OS versions — typically back to API level 26 (Android 8) for broad market reach.

Astro

Astro is a content-focused web framework that ships near-zero JavaScript by default. Released in 2021 (1.0 in August 2022), it renders pages on the server as static HTML and lets you opt-in to interactive "islands" using any UI framework (React, Vue, Svelte, Solid). Astro 5 (late 2024) added stable Server Islands and a built-in content layer.

E

Ethereum

Ethereum is the original smart-contract blockchain, launched in 2015 by Vitalik Buterin and Gavin Wood. It introduced the Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM), the Solidity language, and the broader smart-contract category. After The Merge (September 2022) it became proof-of-stake; today most consumer activity happens on Layer 2 rollups like Starknet, Arbitrum, Optimism, and Base.

F

Flutter

Flutter is Google's open-source UI toolkit for building natively compiled apps for mobile, web, and desktop from a single Dart codebase. Released in 2017 and now at version 3.x, it renders widgets directly to the GPU through its Impeller engine, giving pixel-perfect identical UI across platforms — at the cost of not inheriting platform-native interaction conventions automatically.

G

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO)

Generative Engine Optimization (GEO) is the practice of making web content discoverable and citable by AI answer engines — ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, Google AI Overviews, Bing Copilot — rather than just ranking on classic SERPs. It emphasizes structured data (Schema.org), llms.txt, AI bot crawler invitations, and content patterns LLMs prefer to quote.

I

iOS

iOS is Apple's mobile operating system, the platform behind iPhone (and the foundation of iPadOS, watchOS, tvOS, and visionOS). For app developers it means Swift (the modern default since 2014), SwiftUI plus UIKit for UI, and shipping through the App Store with Apple's review process. iOS users skew higher-spending in most markets, making it the default first-launch platform for many products.

K

Kotlin Multiplatform

Kotlin Multiplatform (KMP) is JetBrains' framework for sharing business logic — data layer, validation, networking, domain models — across iOS, Android, web, and desktop while keeping platform-specific UI native. Released in 2017, declared stable in November 2023, it compiles to JVM bytecode, native binaries, and JavaScript from a single Kotlin codebase.

N

NEAR Protocol

NEAR Protocol is a proof-of-stake blockchain launched in 2020, known for human-readable account names (alice.near instead of 0x…), native account-abstraction primitives, and sharding for scale. Smart contracts are written in Rust or AssemblyScript and compiled to WebAssembly, giving developers a friendlier mental model than the Ethereum Virtual Machine.

NestJS

NestJS is a TypeScript-first server framework for Node.js, designed around dependency injection and modular architecture borrowed from Angular. First released in 2017, it provides batteries-included support for REST, GraphQL, WebSockets, microservices, and queues — letting teams skip the assembly work that plain Express or Fastify require.

Next.js

Next.js is a React-based meta-framework maintained by Vercel. Released in 2016, it adds server-side rendering, static generation, file-system routing, image optimisation, and edge runtimes on top of React. Next.js 15 (2024) made the App Router stable and React Server Components the default model — moving rendering from the client back to the server.

R

React

React is Meta's open-source UI library, the most-used JavaScript framework for building user interfaces (state-driven component model, ~80% adoption among professional JS developers in 2026). Released in 2013, React popularised the component model and JSX, and remains the foundation under most modern frontend stacks — Next.js, Remix, React Native, and dozens of others.

S

Solana

Solana is a high-throughput proof-of-stake blockchain launched in 2020, designed for low fees and fast finality (~400 ms slot time, hundreds of thousands of TPS theoretical capacity). Its single global state model differs sharply from Ethereum's account-based virtual machine, making it well-suited to consumer apps, gaming, payments, and any workload where transaction cost dominates.

W

Web3 Wallets

A Web3 wallet is a client app or browser extension that holds a user's private keys and signs blockchain transactions on their behalf. Wallets range from custodial (exchange-hosted) where a third party holds the keys, to non-custodial (MetaMask, Phantom, Rainbow) where users own the keys directly, to smart-contract wallets (Argent, Safe, Coinbase Smart Wallet) that add programmable features through account abstraction.