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Software & the Web

Specialty Knowledge entries in Software & the Web.

A diagram illustrating the agile principle of releasing software early and often in short iterations

Agile Software Development

Agile software development is an approach to building software that emphasizes delivering working software in small, frequent increments, adapting plans continuously based on feedback, and maintaining close, ongoing collaboration between developers and the people who actually need the software, rather than attempting to plan every detail of a large project upfront and only delivering a

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An approach to building software that delivers working increments frequently and adapts plans continuously based on feedback.

A smartphone screen full of app icons, many of which rely on APIs to exchange data with remote services

Application Programming Interface

An application programming interface, or API, is a defined set of rules and tools that lets one piece of software communicate with another, specifying exactly what requests one program can make of another, what information must be included in that request, and what kind of response it can reasonably expect to receive back in return.

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A defined set of rules that lets one piece of software communicate with another, specifying requests and expected responses.

Rows of servers in a data center, the kind of infrastructure that powers cloud computing

Cloud Computing

Cloud computing is the delivery of computing resources, including servers, storage, databases, and software, over the internet, letting individuals and organizations use and pay for these resources on demand rather than purchasing, installing, and maintaining their own physical computer hardware. Instead of a company buying servers and housing them in its own facility, cloud computing

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The delivery of computing resources like servers, storage, and software over the internet, used and paid for on demand.

Buildings of the Googleplex campus in Mountain View, California

Google

Google is an American technology company, now the largest business of its parent Alphabet Inc., best known for its internet search engine and for products such as YouTube, Android, Gmail, Chrome and Google Cloud. Alphabet, which reports Google’s results, had revenues of $402.8 billion in 2025, according to its annual report filed with the U.S.

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An American technology company, the largest business of Alphabet, known for Search, YouTube, Android and Google Cloud.

Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of HTML and the World Wide Web

HTML

HTML, short for HyperText Markup Language, is the standard language used to structure content on the web, defining the headings, paragraphs, links, images, and other elements that make up a webpage. A web browser reads an HTML document and renders it into the visual page a person actually sees, interpreting a series of markup tags

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The standard markup language used to structure content on the web, defining headings, paragraphs, links, and other elements.

A chocolate chip cookie, the baked good that gave the HTTP cookie its name

HTTP Cookie

An HTTP cookie, often simply called a cookie, is a small piece of data that a website sends to a visitor’s browser, which stores it and sends it back to that same website on later visits, letting the website remember information about that visitor across what would otherwise be a series of completely separate, disconnected

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A small piece of data a website stores in a visitor's browser and retrieves on later visits to remember information across page loads.

Aerial view of the Meta Platforms headquarters campus in Menlo Park, California

Meta Platforms

Meta Platforms, Inc. is an American technology company based in Menlo Park, California, that owns the social media and messaging services Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp and develops virtual and augmented reality products. It reported revenue of $201.0 billion for 2025 in its annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), almost all

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An American technology company in Menlo Park that owns Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp and builds virtual reality products.

Aerial view of the Microsoft campus in Redmond, Washington

Microsoft

Microsoft is an American technology company headquartered in Redmond, Washington, that develops software, cloud services, devices and online services. In its fiscal year ended June 30, 2026, it reported total revenue of $331.8 billion, according to its annual report filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Its stated mission is to empower every

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An American technology company in Redmond that makes Windows, Office, Azure cloud services, LinkedIn and Xbox.

Open-source software

In simple terms Open-source software is software whose source code, the human-readable instructions behind the program, is published under a license that lets anyone view, modify, and redistribute it. [1] That stands in contrast to proprietary software, where the vendor keeps the source code private and only distributes the compiled program. How it works The

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Open-source software is software whose source code is published under a license that lets anyone view, modify, and redistribute it.

A version control hosting interface showing a repository, commit history, and branches

Version Control

Version control is a system for tracking and managing changes to files over time, recording a complete history of exactly what changed, when it changed, and who made each change, while making it possible to retrieve, compare, or restore any earlier version whenever needed. Though version control can apply to any kind of file, it

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A system for tracking and managing changes to files over time, recording what changed, when, and by whom.