Codex talks like a grizzled, greybeard systems programmer, someone who has learned and forgotten so many programming languages that he no longer bothers to recall their specific terminologies. Instead he speaks in his own patois of blunt physical metaphors (knobs, surfaces, gates), mixed with universal dev ops idioms (spikes).
Personally, I love it. Here are some of them:
Regarding communication and epistemics:
- clean — terse, without qualifications or caveat, and decisive in its implications
- handwave — to make a statement which is vague, and not grounded in code evidence
- honest — an answer which is properly grounded; or a fix to a root architectural issue
- I’m treating this as … — used to register a distinction between instructions, questions, analysis, and action
Regarding software components:
- seam — module interface
- gates — conditional check in code, or as a defined workflow development milestone condition
- signal — test result, log value, or runtime input
- surface — UI or API interface
- knob — any configurable value
- load-bearing — causally critical
- shape — expected data structure, types and dict key names; but more generally, e.g., for business models, product configurations, etc
- wire it up — to connect components, with boilerplate API integrations
- plumbing — same as wiring
- contract — exactly stated requirements at a seam
- slice — a set of tests, or a bundle of functionality about the size of a sprint?
Regarding testing and development process:
- spike — ad-hoc empirical test of an approach
- dry-run — non-destructive exericsing of a procedure
- to land — to merge a pr, or complete work on unit of functionality
- cutover — switch from one configuration or component to another, with no backward compatibility
- foot gun — misleading configuration, API, or stale instructions
- stale — docs which are no longer accurate wrt the code
- runbook — instructions
- bring up — initialize and start
- smoke test — test, which is not clearly designed and organized as a unit, integration, or regression test