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Software Engineering vocabulary · Debugging and Troubleshooting

Workaround

Meaning in software engineering, with examples

/ˈwɜːrkəraʊnd/nounCommon term

In software engineering, workaround means: A temporary way to avoid a problem without really fixing it, so that work can continue until a proper solution is ready.

In Turkish: geçici çözüm, dolambaçlı çözüm

How it is used

Used in bug reports, support and team chat: 'Is there a workaround?', 'As a workaround, clear the cache.' Teams try not to leave workarounds in place for too long, because they turn into technical debt.

Example sentences

  1. Until the library is fixed, the workaround is to pin version 2.3.

  2. Support told the customer about a workaround while we prepared a hotfix.

Common collocations

  • temporary workaround
  • find a workaround
  • as a workaround
  • use a workaround
  • fixTo change code so that a problem no longer happens. As a noun, 'a fix' is the change that solves the problem.
  • hotfixAn urgent fix for a serious problem in production, released quickly outside the normal release schedule.
  • root causeThe deepest, original reason a problem happened, as opposed to the symptoms that people noticed first.
  • technical debtThe future cost of shortcuts taken in code today: quick solutions that save time now but make later changes slower and riskier.

This word in other fields

The same English word can have a different meaning in another field:

More terms: Debugging and Troubleshooting

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