g.md

G

Gamma : A non-linear operation used to encode and decode luminance or tristimulus values in video or still image systems. Gamma encoding of images is used to optimize the usage of bits when encoding an image, or bandwidth used to transport an image, by taking advantage of the non-linear manner in which humans perceive light and color. †

Garbage collection : A form of automatic memory management. The garbage collector, or just collector, attempts to reclaim garbage, or memory occupied by objects that are no longer in use by the program. Garbage collection is essentially the opposite of manual memory management, which requires the programmer to specify which objects to deallocate and return to the memory system. However, many systems use a combination of approaches, including other techniques such as stack allocation and region inference. †

Garbage In, Garbage Out : The concept that flawed, or nonsense (garbage) input data produces nonsense output. The principle also applies more generally to analysis and logic, in that arguments are unsound if their premises are flawed. †

Gateway : A piece of networking hardware or software used in telecommunications networks that allows data to flow from one discrete network to another. Gateways are distinct from routers or switches in that they communicate using more than one protocol to connect multiple networks, and can operate at any of the seven layers of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) model. †

Gatsby : A React-based frontend framework for creating websites, and a serverless cloud platform to build, deploy, and host the respective websites. Gatsby was released in 2017. ℹ︎ gatsbyjs.com

GCP : → Google Cloud Platform

GDPR : → General Data Protection Regulation

Gecko : A browser engine developed by Mozilla. It is used in the Firefox browser, the Thunderbird email client, and many other projects. Gecko is designed to support open Internet standards, and is used by different applications to display web pages and, in some cases, an application’s user interface itself (by rendering XUL). Gecko offers a rich programming API that makes it suitable for a wide variety of roles in Internet-enabled applications. † ℹ︎ developer.mozilla.org/Mozilla/Gecko

General Data Protection Regulation : A regulation in EU law on data protection and privacy in the European Union (EU) and the European Economic Area (EEA). The GDPR also addresses the transfer of personal data outside the EU and EEA areas. It aims primarily to give control to individuals over their personal data and to simplify the regulatory environment for international business by unifying the regulation within the EU. Superseding the Data Protection Directive 95/46/EC, the GDPR contains provisions and requirements related to the processing of personal data of individuals (formally called data subjects) who reside in the EEA, and applies to any enterprise—regardless of its location and the data subjects’ citizenship or residence—that is processing the personal information of data subjects inside the EEA. † ℹ︎ gdpr-info.eu

General Image Manipulation Program : → GIMP

General Responsibility Assignment Software Patterns : Guidelines for assigning responsibility to classes and objects in object-oriented design. The different patterns and principles used in GRASP are controller, creator, indirection, information expert, low coupling, high cohesion, polymorphism, protected variations, and pure fabrication. †

Generator : → Generator function

Generator function : A function that can be exited and later re-entered, and that can therefore be used to generate a sequence of results instead of a single result. The context of a generator function (variable bindings) is saved across re-entrances. Generators are particularly useful for asynchronous programming as they mitigate problems with callbacks, such as “callback hell” and Inversion of Control (IoC). ‡

Generic top-level domain : One of the categories of top-level domains (TLDs) maintained by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority (IANA) for use in the Domain Name System of the Internet. A top-level domain is the last level of every fully qualified domain name. gTLDs are called generic for historic reasons; initially, they were contrasted with country-specific TLDs in RFC 920. The core group of generic top-level domains consists of the .com, .info, .net, and .org domains. †

Geofence : A virtual perimeter for a real-world geographic area. A geofence could be dynamically generated (as in a radius around a point location) or match a predefined set of boundaries (such as neighborhood boundaries). The use of a geofence is called geofencing, and one example of use involves a location-aware device entering or exiting a geofence. This activity could trigger an alert to the device’s user as well as messaging to the geofence operator. †

Geolocation API : An effort by the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) to standardize an interface to retrieve the location information for a client-side device. The Geolocation API defines an ECMAScript-compliant set of objects that give the client’s device location through the consulting of location information servers. The most common sources of location information are IP address, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth MAC address, Wi-Fi connection location, radio-frequency identification (RFID), and device Global Positioning System (GPS) or GSM/CDMA cell IDs. † ℹ︎ w3.org/TR/geolocation-API

Geturl : → Wget

GIF : → Graphics Interchange Format

GIGO : → Garbage In, Garbage Out

GIMP : A raster graphics editor used for image retouching and editing, free-form drawing, converting between different image formats, and more specialized tasks. GIMP was first released in 1996. ℹ︎ gimp.org

Git : A distributed version control system for tracking changes in source code during software development. Git is designed for coordinating work among programmers, but it can be used to track changes in any set of files. Its goals include speed, data integrity, and support for distributed, non-linear workflows. As with most other distributed version control systems, and unlike most client-server systems, every Git directory on every computer is a full-fledged repository with complete history and full version-tracking abilities, independent of network access or a central server. Git was created in 2005 by Linus Torvalds. † ℹ︎ git-scm.com

GitHub : A company that provides hosting for software development version control using Git. GitHub was founded in 2008 and is a subsidiary of Microsoft, which acquired the company in 2018 for $7.5 billion. It offers all of the distributed version control and source code management (SCM) functionality of Git as well as its own features. † ℹ︎ github.com

GitHub Copilot : An artificial intelligence tool developed by GitHub and OpenAI to assist users of Visual Studio Code through code auto-completion. GitHub Copilot was released in 2021. † ℹ︎ copilot.github.com

GitLab : A company providing a web-based DevOps lifecycle tool that includes a Git-repository manager providing wiki, issue tracking, and CI/CD pipeline features. GitLab’s software was created in 2011 by Dmitriy Zaporozhets and Valery Sizov. † ℹ︎ gitlab.com

Global : → Global scope

Global object : An object that always exists in the global scope. In JavaScript, there is always a global object defined. In a web browser, when scripts create global variables, they are created as members of the global object (this is not the case in Node.js). The global object’s interface depends on the execution context in which the script is running. ‡

Global scope : The scope that contains, and is visible in, all other scopes. In client-side JavaScript, the global scope is generally the web page inside which all the code is being executed. ‡

Global variable : A variable that is declared in the global scope; in other words, one that is visible from all other scopes. In JavaScript it is a property of the global object. ‡

Globally unique identifier : → Universally unique identifier

Glyph : A readable mark of a particular meaning.

GNU : An operating system and extensive collection of computer software. GNU is composed wholly of free software, most of which is licensed under the GNU Project’s own General Public License (GPL). “GNU” is a recursive acronym for “GNU’s Not Unix,” chosen because GNU’s design is Unix-like, but differs from Unix by being free software and containing no Unix code. Development of the GNU operating system was initiated by Richard Stallman while at the MIT Artificial Intelligence Laboratory. It was first called the “GNU Project,” and announced in 1983. † ℹ︎ gnu.org

GNU General Public License : A widely-used free software license that guarantees end users the freedom to run, study, share, and modify the software. The license was originally written by Richard Stallman for the GNU Project, and grants the recipients of a computer program the rights of the Free Software Definition. The GPL is a copyleft license, which means that derivative work must be free software and distributed under the same or equivalent license terms. This is in distinction to permissive free software licenses, of which the BSD licenses and the MIT License are widely-used less-restrictive examples. GPL was the first copyleft license for general use. †

GNU Project : A free software mass collaboration project initiated in 1983 by Richard Stallman. The GNU Project’s goal is to give computer users freedom and control in their use of their computers and computing devices by collaboratively developing and publishing software that gives everyone the rights to freely run the software, copy and distribute, study, and modify it. GNU software grants these rights in its license, the GNU General Public License. †

Go : A statically typed, compiled programming language developed by Robert Griesemer, Rob Pike, and Ken Thompson, and released by Google in 2009. Go is syntactically similar to C, but with memory safety, garbage collection, structural typing, and CSP-style concurrency. † ℹ︎ golang.org : A Google-proprietary HTML/CSS framework.

Goanna : A browser engine that is a fork of Mozilla’s Gecko. It is used in the Pale Moon browser, the Basilisk browser, and other UXP-based applications. Goanna as an independent fork of Gecko was first released in 2016. †

Golang : → Go

Golden mean : → Golden ratio

Golden ratio : A concept from mathematics, two quantities are in the golden ratio if their ratio is the same as the ratio of their sum to the larger of the two quantities. The golden ratio is an irrational number that is a solution to the quadratic equation x^2^ – x – 1 = 0, with a value of 1.6180339887… Some artists and architects, including Le Corbusier and Salvador Dalí, have proportioned their works to approximate the golden ratio, believing this proportion to be aesthetically pleasing. †

Golden section : → Golden ratio

Google Chrome : → Chrome

Google Cloud Platform : A suite of cloud computing services that runs on the same infrastructure that Google uses for its end user products, such as Google Search, Gmail, or YouTube. Alongside a set of management tools, GCP provides a series of modular cloud services covering computing, data storage, data analytics, and machine learning. † ℹ︎ cloud.google.com

Google Lighthouse : → Lighthouse

Google QUIC : → QUIC

Google TalkBack : → TalkBack

Google Web Server : A proprietary web server software that Google uses for its web infrastructure. GWS is used exclusively inside Google’s ecosystem for website hosting. †

Gopher : A communications protocol designed for distributing, searching, and retrieving documents in Internet Protocol networks. The design of the Gopher protocol and user interface is menu-driven, and presented an alternative to the World Wide Web in its early stages, but ultimately fell into disfavor, yielding to the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP). The Gopher ecosystem is often regarded as the effective predecessor of the World Wide Web. †

GPL : → GNU General Public License

GPU : → Graphics Processing Unit

gQUIC : → Google QUIC

Graceful Degradation : A design philosophy that centers around trying to build a modern website or app that will work in the newest browsers, but falls back to an experience that while not as good still delivers essential content and functionality in older browsers. Polyfills can be used to build in missing features with JavaScript, but acceptable alternatives to features like styling and layout should be provided where possible, for example by using the CSS cascade, or HTML fallback behavior. ‡

Grapheme : The smallest unit of a writing system of any given language. An individual grapheme may or may not carry meaning by itself, and may or may not correspond to a single phoneme of the spoken language. In other words, a grapheme is a letter or a number (set) of letters that represent a sound (more correctly, phoneme) in a word. Graphemes include alphabetic letters, typographic ligatures, Chinese characters, numerical digits, punctuation marks, and other individual symbols. †

Graphic : → Image

Graphical User Interface : A form of user interface that allows users to interact with electronic devices through graphical icons and audio indicators such as primary notation, instead of text-based user interfaces, typed command labels, or text navigation. GUIs were introduced in reaction to the perceived steep learning curve of command-line interfaces (CLIs), which require commands to be typed on a computer keyboard. The actions in a GUI are usually performed through direct manipulation of the graphical elements. †

Graphics Interchange Format : A bitmap image format that was developed in 1987 by a team at CompuServe, led by Steve Wilhite. GIF has since come into widespread usage on the World Wide Web due to its wide support and portability between many applications and operating systems. The format supports up to eight bits per pixel for each image, allowing a single image to reference its own palette of up to 256 different colors chosen from the 24-bit RGB color space. It also supports animations and allows a separate palette of up to 256 colors for each frame. These palette limitations make GIF less suitable for reproducing color photographs and other images with color gradients, but it is well-suited for simpler images such as graphics or logos with solid areas of color. †

Graphics Processing Unit : A specialized electronic circuit designed to rapidly manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobile phones, personal computers, workstations, and game consoles. Modern GPUs are efficient at manipulating computer graphics and image processing. Their highly parallel structure makes them more efficient than general-purpose central processing units (CPUs) for algorithms that process large blocks of data in parallel. †

GraphQL : A data query and manipulation language for APIs, and a runtime for fulfilling queries with existing data. GraphQL provides an approach to developing web APIs, and has been compared and contrasted with REST and other web service architectures. It allows clients to define the structure of the data required, and the same structure of the data is returned from the server, therefore preventing excessively large amounts of data from being returned. GraphQL was developed internally by Facebook in 2012 before being publicly released in 2015. † ℹ︎ graphql.org

GRASP : → General Responsibility Assignment Software Patterns

Greasemonkey : A userscript manager made available as a Firefox extension. Greasemonkey enables users to install scripts that make on-the-fly changes to web page content before or after the page is loaded in the browser (also known as augmented browsing). The changes made to the web pages are executed every time the page is viewed, making them effectively permanent for the user running the script. † ℹ︎ greasespot.net

Greeking : → Placeholder text

Greenfield project : A project that lacks constraints imposed by prior work. The analogy is to that of construction on greenfield land where there is no need to work within the constraints of existing buildings or infrastructure. †

Grid : In design, a structure (usually two-dimensional) made up of a series of intersecting straight (vertical, horizontal, and angular) or curved lines (grid lines) used to structure content. The grid serves as an armature or framework on which a designer can organize graphic elements (images, glyphs, paragraphs, etc.) in a rational, easy-to-absorb manner. A grid can be used to organize graphic elements in relation to a page, to other graphic elements on the page, or to other parts of the same graphic element or shape. † : In CSS, an element using the grid value of the display property, for which columns and rows can be specified through the grid-template-rows and grid-template-columns properties. The grid defined this way is described as an explicit grid. If content is placed outside of this explicit grid, or if auto-placement and the grid algorithm are being relied on, then extra tracks will be created in the implicit grid. The implicit grid is the grid created automatically due to content being added outside of the tracks defined. ‡ ℹ︎ w3.org/TR/css-grid-1

Grid computing : The use of widely distributed computer resources to reach a common goal. A computing grid can be thought of as a distributed system with non-interactive workloads that involve many files. Grid computing is distinguished from conventional high-performance computing systems such as cluster computing in that grid computers have each node set to perform a different task or application. Grid computers also tend to be more heterogeneous and geographically dispersed. †

Grid track : The space between two grid lines. They are defined in the explicit grid by using the grid-template-columns and grid-template-rows properties or the shorthand grid or grid-template properties. Tracks are also created in the implicit grid by positioning a grid item outside of the tracks created in the explicit grid. ‡

gTLD : → Generic top-level domain

Guetzli : A JPEG encoder developed by Jyrki Alakujala, Robert Obryk, and Zoltán Szabadka, and released by Google in 2017. Guetzli specializes in high-end image quality where it is claimed to produce significantly smaller files than prior encoders at equivalent quality, albeit at very low speed. It is named after the Swiss German expression for biscuits, in line with the names of other compression technology from Google. † ℹ︎ github.com/google/guetzli

gulp : → gulp.js

gulp.js : A JavaScript toolkit used as a streaming build system (similar to a more package-focused Make) in frontend web development. gulp is a task runner built on Node.js and npm, used for automation of time-consuming and repetitive tasks involved in web development like minification, concatenation, cache busting, unit testing, linting, optimization, etc. It was created in 2013 by Eric Schoffstall. † ℹ︎ gulpjs.com

Gutter : The space between columns of printed text, including the gap between facing pages. †

GUI : → Graphical User Interface

GUID : → Globally unique identifier

GWS : → Google Web Server

gzip : A file format and software application used for file compression and decompression. The program was created by Jean-loup Gailly and Mark Adler as a free software replacement for the compress program used in early Unix systems, and intended for use by GNU (the “g” is from “GNU”). Version 1.0 was released in 1993. gzip is based on the DEFLATE algorithm. † ℹ︎ gnu.org/software/gzip

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