Snippet
ELI5 — The Vibe Check
A snippet is a short piece of code that does one specific thing, saved so you can paste it anywhere you need it. Developers collect snippets like trading cards — a regex to validate email here, a debounce function there. IDE snippets auto-complete them for you.
Real Talk
A code snippet is a small, reusable block of source code for a specific task. IDEs have built-in snippet systems (VS Code snippets defined in JSON) that expand via tab triggers. Online, GitHub Gists and sites like CodePen serve as snippet-sharing platforms.
When You'll Hear This
"I have a snippet for that debounce pattern." / "Save it as a snippet so you don't rewrite it every time."
Related Terms
Boilerplate
Code you have to write every single time you start a project but that doesn't actually do anything interesting.
DX (DX)
DX (Developer Experience) is UX but for developers. How painful is it to set up the project? How fast is the feedback loop?
Gist
A Gist is a GitHub feature for sharing a single file or small snippet of code publicly (or privately).
Markdown
Markdown is a simple way to format text using just plain characters. Put `**asterisks**` around a word and it becomes **bold**.