legacy system

Definition

Old technology still in use because it's too critical or expensive to replace, despite being held together by prayers and the one person who understands COBOL. It works, nobody knows how, and everyone's terrified to touch it.

Example Usage

Our core banking system is a legacy system from 1987 running on hardware we have to buy from eBay because it's been discontinued for 20 years.

Source: Information technology and systems management

Related Terms

Intermediate

velocity

In the startup world, the speed at which your development team can actually ship features, measured in story points or whatever agile metric your project manager is obsessed with this quarter. Unlike regular speed, velocity has direction—ideally forward, though some teams seem to excel at moving sideways. It's the number that determines whether you'll make your demo day deadline or spend the weekend surviving on Red Bull and regret.

💻 Tech / IT

Intermediate

throttling

When your internet provider decides you've used enough bandwidth and quietly slows your connection to dial-up speeds, or when engineers intentionally limit system performance to prevent meltdown. Originally about choking someone or restricting airflow to an engine, now it's mostly about artificial performance limits. It's speed control, whether for engines, networks, or overly ambitious users.

💻 Tech / IT

Beginner

Bug

An unintended feature that makes your software do something hilariously or catastrophically wrong. The word comes from an actual moth found in a 1947 computer, which means the very first bug was literally a bug, and it's been downhill ever since.

💻 Tech / IT

Advanced

parsing

The computational equivalent of diagramming sentences, where programs break down input into digestible chunks to understand its structure. This process involves analyzing syntax, identifying components, and determining relationships—basically teaching computers to read like very literal English teachers. When it fails, you get error messages that make less sense than the original problem.

💻 Tech / IT

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

Beginner

lag

The frustrating delay between when something should happen and when it actually happens, whether it's network latency making your video call sound like a bad walkie-talkie or the gap between economic policy changes and their actual effects. In online gaming, lag is the difference between heroic victory and embarrassing defeat. In legal contexts, it can also refer to someone sentenced to transportation—though that usage is mercifully outdated.

💻 Tech / IT

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