Glossary: Letter L

Local Area Network: a computer network that interconnects devices within a limited area such as a home, office, or building. LANs typically use Ethernet or Wi-Fi technologies and offer high bandwidth...

LiDAR point cloud formats: LAS is the standard binary format for aerial LiDAR data; LAZ is its compressed variant. Used in surveying, forestry, and terrain modeling.

Leaner Style Sheets: a CSS preprocessor with variables, mixins, and functions. It extends CSS with dynamic behavior while remaining backward-compatible.

Static Library (Windows): a collection of compiled object files linked directly into an executable at compile time, as opposed to dynamic linking with DLLs.

LLVM Intermediate Representation: the low-level, typed intermediate language used by the LLVM compiler infrastructure. Used as a compilation target by many language front-ends.

Lightning Memory-Mapped Database: a high-performance embedded key-value store using memory-mapped files. Used in OpenLDAP and machine learning frameworks.

Lock File: used to prevent concurrent access to a resource or to pin exact dependency versions (package-lock.json, Gemfile.lock, composer.lock).

Log File: a text file recording events, errors, and diagnostic information generated by software, servers, or operating systems.

Lyric File: a simple text format for synchronized song lyrics. Each line is timestamped for karaoke-style display in music players.

An extremely fast lossless compression algorithm focusing on compression and decompression speed rather than ratio. Used in Linux kernel, ZFS, and real-time applications.

Lempel-Ziv-Markov chain Algorithm: a compression algorithm providing high compression ratios. It is the core algorithm used in 7z and XZ formats.

Lempel-Ziv-Oberhumer: a data compression algorithm focused on decompression speed. Used in the Linux kernel, OpenVPN, and embedded systems.

A document preparation system and markup language for high-quality typesetting. Standard in academia for scientific papers, theses, and mathematical documents.

A free, open-source PHP web application framework designed for building modern web applications following the MVC architectural pattern. Laravel provides elegant syntax, robust tools for routing, ORM,...

A type of AI model trained on vast amounts of text data that can understand, generate, and reason about human language. LLMs like GPT-4, Claude, and Llama use transformer architectures with billions o...

The time delay between sending a request and receiving a response over a network, typically measured in milliseconds. Latency is affected by physical distance, network congestion, routing, and process...

A design pattern that defers the loading of non-critical resources until they are actually needed. In web development, lazy loading is commonly applied to images, videos, and JavaScript modules to imp...

A CSS preprocessor that extends CSS with variables, mixins, functions, and nesting. Less can run on the server (Node.js) or client-side in the browser.

A fast key-value storage engine by Google using LSM trees. Used internally by Chrome, Bitcoin Core, and as a backend for many databases.

The native file formats of LightWave 3D. .lwo stores 3D object data; .lws stores scene layout and animation. Historically used in TV production (Babylon 5, Battlestar Galactica).