Question

Describe a couple of appropriate examples of slang or words that separate your community from others. Did you create these words yourselves, or did you take these words from other languages and communities?
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Answer 1

In the developer/open-source community I’m part of we often use terms like “rubber ducking” (explaining your code or problem aloud to an inanimate object to find the bug) and “yak shaving” (getting distracted by a long chain of small tasks that all have to be done before you can finish the thing you originally set out to do); both expressions function as shorthand that marks insiders who share the same workflows and humor. Neither is a loanword from another spoken language — they were coined within tech culture (rubber ducking was popularized by programmers and books like The Pragmatic Programmer, and yak shaving originated as a humorous metaphor in hacker communities) — though they do draw on common English words and wider cultural images to create instantly understandable in-group slang.