Acronym Fatigue Series part 1: CAP, ACID and friends

This is part of the AFS (Acronym Fatigue Series) I’m working on. If you haven’t, please read the introduction first to understand why I’m wary of acronyms here. Note: CAP and ACID are useful concepts that every software engineer should know. This is not a criticism of the ideas behind the Acronyms. It’s a criticism of engineers making mistakes due to their acronymic nature. CAP, ACID, and others (such as BASE, PACELC), are acronyms that represent sound concepts and but their acronymic nature can be considered harmful. But before we dive deep into CAP and ACID, let’s ponder for a moment if there’s really any gains from using Acronyms when discussing technical concepts.