A crowdsourced dictionary of coding terms

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Changelog
May 1, 2023
  • Terms now appear on definition pages (you might search for "deno" and get "denormalization"). Now it should be clear which term you're looking at!.
April 27, 2023
  • Beautifying Hackterms continues. There's now an overlay whenever the modal pops up; for example, when you log in or add a definition.
April 26, 2023
  • Made a lot of tiny visual tweaks: standardizing box shadow and border radius and colors and such.
April 20, 2023

Sorry for the downtime there, folks! This is the longest Hackterms has been down since launch. I identified and resolved the cause of the issue. I also took this opportunity to make some small UI changes. I first designed Hackterms in 2017-18 (!) and my sense of design has evolved significantly since then. These small changes reflect this.

  • Upgraded to a newer MongoDB version.
  • Spruced up the UI for the first time in 5 years.
March 9, 2023
  • Correct a typo on an email
  • Session is now set to 180 days
  • Mod actions have clearer labels
December 6, 2020
  • We're aliiiive! Migrated to Mongo Atlas. This won't affect anyone, but also means our DB won't go down with MLab, so that's great :) Maybe more excitement in the future?
October 22, 2018
  • Slightly tweak card design.
  • Added a buy me a coffee link to footer (because coffee doesn't buy itself).
October 8, 2018
  • Tweaked design for cleaner cards, replaced beige background with a muted gray background.
  • Switched to white/gray card theme instead of shades of brown.
August 19, 2018
  • Added additional checks for new definitions to prevent XSS attacks.
May 26, 2018
  • Added a Privacy & ToS page detailing which data Hackterms stores. Added Terms of Service.
  • Added the ability to delete your account and all the associated data
May 19, 2018
  • Refactored the regex search to be able to more accurately search terms
  • Tweaked color contrast on the front page for better visibility
  • Replaced the search bar dropdown with term links that show up in the main section
April 9, 2018
  • Added "created on" date to definition card header
April 5, 2018
  • Minor design tweaks: updated category bar colors, removed borders around definition actions, increased definition spacing for readibility
April 3, 2018
  • Set max screen width to 980px in order to make it easier to read
April 1, 2018
  • Introduced Cluckterms, the fancy book of farm words as the first April Fool's gag
  • Search is now more flexible - for example back-end and backend lead to the same term
March 27, 2018
  • Added further clarification about what constitutes a "coding term" in the FAQ
  • Any non-definition page (changelog, faq, rules) is now listed under /about/
  • Added an "add definition" + button to the search bar
March 18, 2018
  • Redesigned search bar and header
March 17, 2018
  • Implemented cross-linking - terms on the site now link to their definitions when they show up in other definitions
March 14, 2018
  • Happy Pi day! Please have some pie :)
  • Signup flow now checks for duplicate emails. Previously, you could sign up with two usernames using one email. This is no longer the case - one email, one username per user
  • Added a Formatting reference to the Add Definition modal
March 13, 2018
  • Top searched and most requested term headings are now tabs
March 12, 2018
  • Contributors now receive notifications when new comments are left on their definitions
March 11, 2018
  • Searches with +, *, (), [], and other non-alphanumeric characters are now displaying correctly
  • Line breaks are now preseved (and show up in past definitions!); multiple line breaks are collapsed to one line break
  • Markdown support is now enabled for *bold*, _italics_, and `code`
March 8, 2018
  • Added a "request a definition" button. Switched from logging every incoming search as a request to a more delibirate user action - requesting a definition for a term (only available to logged in users)
March 7, 2018
  • Added this changelog
  • Updated footer style
  • Added press page