As a recruiter, you’re expected to understand how lots of terms thrown around by technical people interact. This little guide is my attempt to help you classify what you see on resumes, so you can better determine what a candidate could easily learn or might have missed, and what’s a “core competence”. It’s divided into categories, and there’s an acronym index. It’s far from complete, but if there’s a term you want added, or you see a mistake, just drop me an email message and I’ll update the page.
Each term is placed in a category. I've chosen the categories to give you an idea of how long it takes to master a topic. This will help you distinguish things which take years to master from things which takes months, days, or hours.
I've tried to provide links back and forth between terms, definitions, and categories. Please let me know if you find this confusing or if it doesn't work for you. I'm happy to rearrange this to suit your needs.
The categories I've used are described below, along with a description of what each category does, and how long it takes a developer to master. Each category is linked to the classification page, which lists all the tools I could think of (or that someone sent me) in that category.
You can start with either listing: