WhatIs

/ˈeɪ.piˌaɪ/

The concept of APIs has existed since the early days of computing. Here’s a brief timeline:

/zȯrk-mid/

n. The canonical unit of currency in hacker-written games. This originated in zork but has spread to nethack and is referred to in several other games.

/zȯrk/

n. The second of the great early experiments in computer fantasy gaming; see ADVENT. Originally written on MIT-DM during the late 1970s, later distributed with BSD UNIX and commercialized as The Zork Trilogy by Infocom.

/zȯrch/

1. [TMRC] v. To attack with an inverse heat sink.

2. [TMRC] v. To travel, with v approaching c [that is, with velocity approaching lightspeed -- ESR].

3. [MIT] v. To propel something very quickly.

"The new comm software is very fast; it really zorches files through the network."

4. [MIT] n. Influence. Brownie points. Good karma. The intangible and fuzzy currency in which favors are measured.

"I'd rather not ask him for that just yet; I think I've used up my quota of zorch with him for the week."

/zäm-bē/

[UNIX]

n. A process that has died but has not yet relinquished its process table slot (because the parent process hasn't executed a wait(2) for it yet). These can be seen in ps(1) listings occasionally.

Compare orphan.

/zi-pər-hed/

[IBM]

n. A person with a closed mind.

/zip/

[primarily MS-DOS]

vt. To create a compressed archive from a group of files using PKWare's PKZIP or a compatible archiver. Its use is spreading now that portable implementations of the algorithm have been written. Commonly used as follows:

"I'll zip it up and send it to you."

See arc, tar and feather.

/zi-gə-mȯrf/

n. Hex FF (11111111) when used as a delimiter or fence character. 

Usage: primarily at IBM shops.

/zir-ōth/

adj. First. Among software designers, comes from C's and LISP's 0-based indexing of arrays. Hardware people also tend to start counting at 0 instead of 1; this is natural since, e.g., the 256 states of 8 bits correspond to the binary numbers 0, 1, ..., 255 and the digital devices known as 'counters' count in this way.

/zir-ō kän-tent/

adj. Syn. content-free.