rollout

Definition

The phased deployment or launch of a new product, feature, or military operation, typically done gradually to minimize the catastrophic failure that would result from releasing everything at once. It's the corporate equivalent of testing the water with your toe before jumping in, except you're testing with other people's toes. Tech companies love rollouts because they provide a built-in excuse when things inevitably break.

Example Usage

We're doing a staged rollout of the new feature to 10% of users first, so when it crashes we only disappoint a small fraction of our customer base.

Source: Technology and military deployment terminology

Related Terms

Intermediate

extensibility

The software design philosophy that your code should gracefully accommodate future features you haven't thought of yet, like building a house with extra electrical outlets for gadgets that don't exist. Good extensibility means developers can add new functionality without rewriting the entire codebase or breaking existing features. It's the difference between 'we can add that feature in a week' and 'we need to rebuild everything from scratch.'

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Intermediate

webhook

A way for an application to send real-time data to other applications via HTTP callbacks. It's the polite way for services to say 'hey, something happened' instead of you constantly asking 'did something happen yet?'

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Advanced

pointer

In tech, a variable that stores a memory address rather than an actual value, making it both incredibly powerful and the source of countless debugging nightmares. It's like giving someone directions to a house instead of bringing them the house itself—efficient until someone writes down the wrong address. The leading cause of segmentation faults and developer existential crises.

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Intermediate

attenuation

The gradual loss of signal strength, wave amplitude, or general oomph as something travels through space or time. In tech, it's why your Wi-Fi sucks in the bathroom; in biology, it's why scientists deliberately weaken pathogens to make vaccines. Think of it as nature's (or physics') way of enforcing the "things get worse over distance" rule.

💻 Tech / IT

Intermediate

subset

A mathematical concept describing a group where every member also belongs to a larger parent group, like how 'tech bros' is a subset of 'people who own too many hoodies.' In set theory, if every element of set A is also in set B, then A is a subset of B—simple as that. Data scientists love dropping this term to make basic categorization sound sophisticated.

💻 Tech / IT

Intermediate

D:

The default drive letter assigned to CD-ROM and DVD drives in Windows operating systems, a designation that made sense back when computers actually had disc drives. For younger folks who've never seen a physical disc: yes, we used to store data on shiny circular objects. A relic of computing history that persists in legacy systems.

💻 Tech / IT

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Beginner

fsod

frosn screen of death...