A webapp to define acronyms, words, and phrases. Especially useful in work environments that use lots of non-standard, poorly-defined acronyms. Allows anyone to add their own definitions and grow the knowledgebase.
- Install Redis (2.0+)
- Setup virtualenv
virtualenv ./
. bin/activate
pip install -r requirements.txt
- Run the Webapp
python webserver.py
Open http://localhost:5000/ in a browser to view the application.
Note: WTF will work without Redis, but all the data be lost on each restart.
To build a container for running WTF:
docker build -f Dockerfile -t wtf .
To run the container:
docker run --rm -it -p 5000:5000 --network host wtf
Two reasons:
- To scratch an itch I had for an easy to use definition site.
- To play around more with Flask and virtualenv.
I've worked at a number of acronym-heavy tech companies. When I started at a new company I'd keep a spreadsheet open so I could jot down company acronyms and (hopefully) what they meant. Eventually the spreadsheets became Wiki pages. I like to think they're still in use and being maintained by someone, somewhere.
When I worked at VMware someone turned me on to the "WTF" web site: wtf.eng.vmware.com. WTF (What The d-Fine) was a web app that Saul had created when he worked there years earlier. Every time we had an all-hands meeting I'd pull up WTF in a window so I could figure out WTF upper management was talking about as they threw out three-letter acronyms with wild abandon. It was also incredibly helpful for decoding email messages and deciphering our public-facing docs -- which often used acronyms without defining them.
When Broadcom bought VMware and shut down all of our old infrastructure I made sure that WTF was migrated and preserved. It was far too valuable to be lost.
- Fix the "All" button.
- Switch back to using cdnjs.com for the javascript files
- Fix the date/time
- Maybe add a fall back to a standard dictionary site