1. app
Short for ‘application program’, as opposed to a systems
program. Apps are what systems vendors are forever chasing developers to
create for their environments so they can sell more boxes. Hackers tend
not to think of the things they themselves run as apps; thus, in hacker
parlance the term excludes compilers, program editors, games, and messaging
systems, though a user would consider all those to be apps. (Broadly, an
app is often a self-contained environment for performing some well-defined
task such as ‘word processing’; hackers tend to prefer more
general-purpose tools.) See killer app; oppose
tool, operating
system.
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Definitions of app
