We’ve compiled a full list of commonly encountered IT terminology that will help you better understand the industry and how it works. By familiarizing yourself with basic computer terms and definitions, you’ll allow yourself to understand manuals, descriptions, and everyday jargon necessary to fully grasp IT products and services.
You’ll find our tech glossary is conveniently laid out below in alphabetical order with an easy navigation interface so you can quickly reference words related to technology.
In addition to our tech terms, you can also find other resources to help you learn more about the role of technology in modern industry, including blogs, whitepapers, and case studies. Though our list of IT terms to know is expansive, if you have any further questions regarding things to know about technology, please contact us.
A Yagi Antenna is a directional antenna consisting of multiple parallel elements in a line, usually comprising a single driven element connected to the transmitter or receiver and additional parasitic elements (directors and reflectors) that enhance the antenna’s performance. Invented by Hidetsugu Yagi and Shintaro Uda in 1926, the Yagi antenna is widely used for point-to-point communication systems, including television reception, amateur radio, and wireless networking. Its design focuses radio waves in a specific direction, providing high gain and improved signal quality over long distances.
Yahoo! is a multinational technology company that started as a web directory and search engine in 1994. It has since evolved into a web services provider offering a range of products, including Yahoo Mail, Yahoo News, Yahoo Finance, and Yahoo Sports. Yahoo! played a pivotal role in the early development of the internet, providing users with a portal to access various online services. Despite facing stiff competition from other tech giants, Yahoo! remains a significant player in delivering content, email services, and advertising solutions to millions of users worldwide.
The Y2K Problem, also known as the Millennium Bug, was a significant concern leading up to the year 2000. Many computer systems represented years using two digits (e.g., “99” for 1999), which could cause errors when the date rolled over to “00,” making systems interpret it as 1900 instead of 2000. Potential issues included data corruption, calculation errors, and system failures. Extensive remediation efforts were undertaken globally to update software and hardware, resulting in minimal disruptions when the new millennium began. The Y2K phenomenon underscored the importance of proper date handling and system maintenance in software development.
A Yottabyte (YB) is a unit of digital information storage that equals one septillion bytes, or 102410^{24}1024 bytes. In binary terms, it’s approximately 1,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,1761,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,1761,208,925,819,614,629,174,706,176 bytes. A yottabyte represents an unimaginably large amount of data, far exceeding the current data storage capacities available globally. The term is often used to conceptualize data at an astronomical scale, such as the total data generated by all the devices connected to the Internet of Things (IoT) or the vast datasets processed in exascale computing environments.
YAML is a human-readable data serialization language commonly used for configuration files and data exchange between programming languages. The acronym stands for “YAML Ain’t Markup Language,” highlighting its focus on data rather than documents. YAML uses a minimal syntax featuring indentation to represent hierarchical relationships, making it easy to read and write. It supports complex data structures like mappings (hashes/dictionaries), sequences (arrays/lists), and scalars (strings, numbers). YAML is widely utilized in DevOps and automation tools such as Ansible, Docker Compose, Kubernetes, and CircleCI for defining configurations in a straightforward and efficient manner.
