100+ Software Development Acronyms Every Developer Must Know

From software development tools to programming languages — acronyms are everywhere.

As a software developer, you will find it very useful to have a basic understanding of the many acronyms that are thrown around when talking about code. Many of these terms have been developed over the years and are used by all kinds of programmers.

We have compiled a list of some commonly used as well as some new and interesting software development acronyms.

Let’s take a look…

Software Development Acronyms

Acronym	Description
ACSS	Atomic Cascading Style Sheets
AD	Active Directory
AJAX	Asynchronous JavaScript And XML
AMP	Accelerated Mobile Pages
API	Application Programming Interface
AR	Augmented Reality
ARIA	Accessible Rich Internet Applications
ASP	Active Server Pages
AWS	Amazon Web Services
Bash	Bourne Again Shell
BDD	Behaviour Driven Development
BEM	Block Element Modifier
BIOS	Basic Input Output System
BREAD	Browse, Read, Edit, Add, Delete
CDN	Content Delivery Network
CLI	Command Line Interface
CMS	Content Management System
CMYK	Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black
COM	Component Object Model
CRON	Command Run ON
CRUD	Create, Read, Update, Delete
CSS	Cascading Style Sheet
CSSOM	Cascading Style Sheets Object Model
CSV	Comma-Separated Value
CTA	Call To Action
CVS	Concurrent Versioning System
DBMS	Database Management System
DDS	Digital Data Storage
DNA	Digital Network Architecture
DNS	Domain Name System
DOM	Document Object Model
DRY	Don’t Repeat Yourself
EOF	End of File
EOL	End of Line
ERP	Enterprise Resource Planning
ES	ECMAScript
FIFO	First In First Out
FOSS	Free and Open-Source Software
FTP	File Transfer Protocol
FTU	First Time User
GUI	Graphic User Interface
GUID	Globally Unique Identifier
HTML	HyperText Markup Language
HTTP	Hypertext Transfer Protocol
IaaS	Infrastructure as a Service
IDE	Integrated Development Environment (Python IDEs, Java IDEs)
IIFE	Immediately-invoked Function Expression
IoT	Internet of Things
ISDN	Integrated Services Digital Network
JDBC	Java Database Connectivity
JDK	Java Development Kit
JRE	Java Runtime Environment
JS	JavaScript (Learn JavaScript)
JSON	JavaScript Object Notation
JVM	Java Virtual Machine
KISS	Keep It Stupid Simple
LAMP	Linux, Apache, MySQL, and PHP
LIFO	Last In First Out
LOC	Lines of Code
LTS	Long Term Support
MEAN	MongoDB, Express.js, Angular, and Node.js
ML	Machine Learning
MVC	Model, View, and Controller
NLP	Natural Language Processing
OAuth	Open Authorization
OCR	Optical Character Recognition
OOP	Object-Oriented Programming
ORM	Object Relational Mapping
OSS	Open Source Software
P2P	Peer-to-Peer
QA	Quality Assurance
QoS	Quality of Service
REGEX	Regular Expression
REST	Representational State Transfer
RSS	Really Simple Syndication
SaaS	Software as a Service
SCM	Source Code Management
SDK	Software Development Kit
SEO	Search Engine Optimization
SMACSS	Scalable and Modular Architecture for CSS
SOAP	Simple Object Access Protocol
SPA	Single Page Application
SQL	Structured Query Language
SSH	Secure Shell
SSL	Secure Socket Layer
TCP	Transmission Control Protocol
TDD	Test-driven development
UAT	User Acceptance Testing
UI	User Interface
URL	Uniform Resource Locator
UUID	Universally Unique Identifier
UX	User Experience
VDI	Virtual Desktop Infrastructure
VFS	Virtual File System
VM	Virtual Machine
VPN	Virtual Private Network
VR	Virtual Reality
W3C	World Wide Web Consortium
WORM	Write Once Read Many
WWW	World Wide Web
WYSIWYG	What You See Is What You Get
XHTML	Extensible HyperText Markup Language
XML	Extensible Markup Language
XP	Extreme Programming
YAGNI	You Ain’t Gonna Need It

Final words

It’s difficult to enter a conversation about programming without hearing these above-mentioned acronyms brought up, referenced, and used.

While they may seem foreign at first, knowing these terms can increase your understanding of software development, expand your network as a programmer

Also read: JavaScript Common Interview Questions and Answers

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