Prior to joining Ziff Davis, I spent nearly two decades as a computer programmer (or, ahem, “Software Engineer,” as we preferred to be called). I worked in many different technology areas and wrote a few books too, and felt I was quite the expert.

Yet, when I took this job at Ziff as an editor, I quickly discovered that I was surrounded by words I didn’t know. Here I was, with all this experience in computer programming, hearing my fellow editors use words so unfamiliar to me I started feeling like the little guy with the pointy head on the covers of the yellow books I’d been writing.

What was going on?

Turns out it was a big disconnect between marketers and programmers. The official information coming out of the hardware and software companies is written by marketers. And as most of us programmers know, marketing people and technical people often don’t talk to each other. (Heck, they usually don’t even like each other, but that’s a topic more suited for a web site on human resources.)

Take a look at our flagship site, eWeek.com, and you’ll see tons of words that you, as a programmer, might not know, as much as you (and I) probably don’t want to admit it. How can that be? We’re supposed to be the experts, yet here we are surrounded by words we don’t know. And, heaven forbid, if a situation requires us to tidy up our resumes, a lot of these words might even appear in the job ads. What to do?

Well I’m here to help. Over the past year and a half I’ve slowly been compiling a list of words that appear all over, but ones us programmers might not know. Learn these words; learn them now. And heck, you might find you already know these technologies just under other names, and you can already put them on your resume...and find a better job! Read on.