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IT Terminology Dictionary: Letter C

Abbreviation	Decoding	Description	Group	Note	Related terms
CA	Certificate Authority	An organization that issues digital certificates.	Security	Like a passport office, but for websites and without the labor reserves from neighboring territories.
CAC	Customer Acquisition Cost	Cost of acquiring one new customer. How much a company spends on advertising, marketing, and sales to get one person to become a customer.	Marketing	CAC is how much money you spent on advertising so that Petya sees your banner, goes to your site, and buys your cat mug. If CAC is lower than the profit from Petya — you're doing great. If CAC is higher than profit — you're broke, but at least you have a lot of cool cat banners. The ideal CAC is when you paid a friend with beer to tell another friend about you.
CAP	Consistency, Availability, Partition tolerance	A theorem stating that in a distributed system, you can't have everything at once.	Architecture	You'll have to sacrifice one: like choosing between salary and interesting work.
CARE	Principles for managing research data	A set of rules for storing data so that it can be found.	Data	Useful when the boss asks `where's the report?`.
CBOR	Concise Binary Object Representation	A data format like JSON, but in binary form.	Data	So you don't carry extra bytes over the network. Like saving data when you're not roaming.	JSON
CD	Continuous Delivery	A process where code is automatically built, tested, and ready for release.	Testing & Quality	So you don't have to struggle with deployment at 3 AM. And sleep peacefully while everything goes to hell.
CDP	Cisco Discovery Protocol	A protocol for discovering neighboring Cisco devices.	Network & Infrastructure	So network admins know who's connected to whom. Like a roll call in the army, but for routers and without hazing.
CGLIB	Code Generation Library	Generates subclasses on the fly for AOP.	Development	Used in Spring so you can write beautiful code while it does the work. Also beautifully. Or however it turns out.
CI	Continuous Integration	A process where code is automatically built and tested after every commit.	Testing & Quality	So you don't find out about a broken build on Friday evening. But only on Monday morning.
CKAN	Open Data Platform	An open-source platform for publishing and searching data.	Data	So government data doesn't sit idle but is available to anyone who believes they actually got government data.
CLI	Command Line Interface	A black screen with white text where you enter commands.	General	Looks like a hacker from 90s movies, but it's actually just work.
CLR	Common Language Runtime	A runtime environment for .NET code.	Development	Like JVM for Java, only from Microsoft. For fans of sieve-like and leaky software.	JVM
CMOS	Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor	Used in processors and microcontrollers.	General	Without it, your computer wouldn't turn on. Well, maybe it would, but it would work like a calculator.
CPU	Central Processing Unit	The brain of the computer.	General	The more cores, the faster it thinks. Or it just heats the room.
CQRS	Command Query Responsibility Segregation	An architecture where commands (write) and queries (read) use different models.	Architecture	For complex systems where reads are more frequent than writes.
CRL	Certificate Revocation List	A list of certificates that can no longer be trusted.	Security	Like a blacklist for documents. Like with foreign agents — you have a passport, but it's just not the same.
CRM	Customer Relationship Management	A system for managing customer relationships. Helps companies remember who their customers are, what they bought, and when their birthday is.	Management	Your personal digital assistant who remembers that client Vasya is allergic to cats, his mother-in-law's birthday, and that he hates being called at lunch. If CRM didn't remind you — you lost a client. If CRM reminded you but you still didn't call — you lost a client, but at least you know you should have called.
CRUD	Create, Read, Update, Delete	Four operations that 90% of applications can perform.	Data	Everything else is just a combination of these. Like in a family: mom can create (C), kids can request (R), mother-in-law can reinterpret (U), dad can send away (D).
CSR	Certificate Signing Request	A request to obtain a digital certificate.	Security	Like a passport application, but for a website. Or another example — a visa application. They'll eventually revoke it, but the queue never ends.
CSRF	Cross-Site Request Forgery	An attack where an attacker forces a user to send a request to a website.	Security	So you don't accidentally transfer money to scammers.
CSS	Cascading Style Sheets	A style language that controls the appearance of a web page. It defines colors, fonts, margins, and the layout of elements.	Web Development	CSS is a cosmetologist for your website. Without it, your page looks like a programmer after a night deployment — pale, unkempt, everything is in its place, but nobody likes it. With CSS it becomes like an Instagram star — everything is coordinated, colors are vibrant, and even grandma will say 'beautiful!'.
CSV	Comma-Separated Values	A file format for storing tabular data where values are separated by commas. Can be opened in Excel or Google Sheets.	Data	CSV is a format that everyone hates but everyone uses. It's like a dormitory for data: each element lives in its own cell, but all the partitions are just commas. You open it in Excel and it shifts because there's a comma in one field. You fix it, save it, and the encoding breaks, and now there are hieroglyphs. But it's the most honest format: no frills, just letters and commas.
CSW	Catalogue Service for the Web	A service for searching and accessing geospatial data.	Data	Like a search engine, but for maps.
CT	Continuous Testing	Tests that are run automatically after every commit.	Testing & Quality	So you don't find out about a bug from users.