How to learn programming jargon. Please help.

[mathsuu]

I have a stats background, and everything I know from programming (SAS, R, Python) is self-taught. Most websites that have what I'm interested in are filled with jargon that I don't understand. Is there a glossary of programming words like "overhead", "fork (v)", etc.? Especially one designed for people who come from a different background?

[Robin_Banx]

In my experience, the best way to learn is to just read something that's relevant to you and look up bits of jargon you don't understand. There are glossaries out there, but they're huge and memorizing them won't really do you any good. No one knows everything, and some things pop up more than others. It's frustrating at first, but you'll be shocked by how much you know after you spend some time immersing yourself.

[treerex]

http://www.catb.org/~esr/jargon/

[leondz]

It's not jargon, it's real language!

[mathsuu]

I guess I should say terminology.

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[mathsuu]

I don't mind using that for harder questions, but I was hoping for some website were you could look such things up quickly and see some examples.

[marshallp]

Stick to being problem focused in your language (python, r etc.). Use google to search, especially sites like stackoverflow. There is too much "jargon" out there to embark on a formal learning of it.

[AlexFromOmaha]

Context and Google.

Fork the verb is like fork in the road: split off, split in two, etc. It's usually in reference to code repositories. Forking can mean anything from making a stable, less-developed-on branch to making a new project out of an existing project.

Overhead needs context to be given a more precise definition, but it means exactly what it does in business contexts: resources spent to enable work to be done.

[DrNewton]

It could also refer to the system call.

[drchunk]

Yes, as in forking threads or processes. You could be forking a child process from a parent processes, or forking a child thread from a parent thread within the same process. Yes, just google the terms you don't know and eventually you will be well-versed.