Basic Computer Terminology- V to Z

vi: A text editor, initialism for visual, a command in the ex editor which helped users to switch to the visual mode from the ex mode. The first version was written by Bill Joy at UC Berkeley.

Vim: A text editor, acronym for vi improved after Vim added several features over the vi editor. Vim however had started out as an imitation of vi and was expanded as vi imitation.

Vaporware: "Software" advertised, and sometimes sold, that does not yet exist in a releasable for.

Virtual memory: Using part of your hard drive as though it were "RAM".

Virus: A piece of program code that spreads by making copies of itself. The term virus was first used as a technical computer science term by Fred Cohen in his 1984 paper "Computer Viruses Theory and Experiments", where he credits Len Adleman with coining it. Although Cohen's use of virus may have been the first academic use, it had been in the common parlance long before that. A mid 1970s science fiction novel by David Gerrold, When H.A.R.L.I.E. was one, includes a description of a fictional computer program called VIRUS that worked just like a virus (and was countered by a program called ANTIBODY). The term "computer virus" also appears in the comic book "Uncanny X-Men" No. 158, published in 1982. A computer virus's basic function is to insert its own executable code into that of other existing executable files, literally making it the electronic

equivalent to the biological virus, the basic function of which is to insert its genetic information into that of the invaded cell, forcing the cell to reproduce the virus.

W

Wiki or WikiWiki: A hypertext document collection or the collaborative software used to create it.

Coined by Ward Cunningham, the creator of the wiki concept, who named them for the "wiki wiki" or "quick" shuttle buses at Honolulu Airport. Wiki wiki was the first Hawaiian term he learned on his first visit to the islands. The airport counter agent directed him to take the wiki wiki bus between terminals.

Worm: A self-replicating program, similar to a virus.

The name 'worm' was taken from a 1970s science fiction novel by John Brunner entitled The Shockwave Rider. The book describes programs known as "tapeworms" which spread through a network for the purpose of deleting data. Researchers writing an early paper on experiments in distributed computing noted the similarities between their software and the program described by Brunner, and adopted that name.

WORM: Acronym for Write Once-Read Many; an optical disk that can only be written to once (like a CD-ROM).

WYSIWYG: Describes a system in which content during editing appears very similar to the final product.

Acronym for What You See Is What You Get, the phrase was originated by a

newsletter published by Arlene and Jose Ramos, called WYSIWYG. It was created for the emerging Pre-Press industry going electronic in the late 1970s.

Y

Yahoo!: Internet portal and web directory.

Yahoo!'s history site says the name is an acronym for "Yet Another Hierarchical Officious Oracle", but some remember that in its early days (mid-1990s), when Yahoo! lived on a server called akebono.stanford.edu, it was glossed as "Yet Another Hierarchical Object Organizer." The word "Yahoo!" was originally invented by Jonathan Swift and used in his book Gulliver's Travels. It represents a person who is repulsive in appearance and action and is barely human. Yahoo! founders Jerry Yang and David Filo selected the name because they considered themselves yahoos.

Z

Zip: A file format now also used as a verb to mean compress

The file format was created by Phil Katz, and given the name by his friend Robert Mahoney. The compression tool Phil Katz created was called PKZIP. Zip means "speed", and they wanted to imply their product would be faster than ARC and other compression formats of the time.

Zoom box: A small square in the upper right corner of a window which, when clicked, will expand the window to fill the whole screen.