When you don't know what a word means

Glossary 📖

Programmers use a ton of weird words. Here they're explained in plain language.

Internet: Millions of computers all over the world connected by cables and signals. Thanks to it, computers can send each other messages, photos, and entire websites.
Website: A document that can be shown in a browser. It's made of text, images, and links. A site (like your school's site) is a group of pages that belong together.
Browser: The program you use to look at the internet – like Chrome, Safari, or Firefox. It reads HTML and CSS and draws a page on the screen from them.
Server: A computer that's always on and connected to the internet. Websites live on it. When you type an address into your browser, the server sends you the page.
HTML: The language used to write a page's skeleton: what's a heading, what's a paragraph, where's an image. The letters stand for HyperText Markup Language, but you don't need to remember that.
Tag: HTML's building block. It looks like this: <p>hi</p>. The <p> tag says "a paragraph starts here" and </p> says "it ends here".
CSS: The language that gives a page its look: colors, fonts, layout. HTML is the skeleton, CSS is the outfit.
JavaScript: The language you use to tell a page what to do: react to clicks, keep score in a quiz, toggle dark mode. Skeleton, outfit – and this is the behavior.
Editor: A program for writing code, like VS Code. It's like Word, but for programmers: it colors code, suggests things, and catches mistakes.
File and folder: A website's code lives in files (like index.html), and files live in folders. Just like notebooks in a backpack.
Variable: A labeled box a program uses to store things: a number, a name, a score. When it needs it, it looks inside by name.
Link: A (usually blue) clickable spot on a page that takes you somewhere else. In HTML it's made with an <a> tag.
Address (URL): What you type at the top of your browser, like www.example.com. Every page in the world has its own.
React: A JavaScript tool used to build big websites out of reusable pieces – components. Used by Facebook, Netflix, and Airbnb.
Component: A piece of a website you write once and use many times – like a menu, a button, or a player card. Like a Lego brick.
Node.js: Thanks to it, JavaScript can run outside the browser too – like on a server. You'll use it in Level 3 to build your own server.
Terminal: A black window where you type commands as text. It looks like something out of a hacker movie, but it's just another way to tell the computer what to do.
GitHub: A place on the internet where programmers store their code and can publish a website for free (that's called GitHub Pages).