Extensible

What Does Extensible Mean?

Extensibility is a measurement of a piece of technology’s capacity to append additional elements and features to its existing structure. A software program, for example, is considered extensible when its operations may be augmented with add-ons and plugins. Extensible programming languages have the ability to define new features and introduce new functionality within them.

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Techopedia Explains Extensible

The concept of extensibility has existed since at least 1960, during which computer scientists and programmers like Douglas McIlroy and Tony Brooker posited ideas about programming languages and software whose features could grow and be expanded upon through time. The idea was further solidified in 1969 at the Extensible Languages Symposium, where Carlos Christensen outlined the idea of a programming language that could be extended with “meta-language” with the ability to “expand, contract, or otherwise modify the definition of the base language.”

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Margaret Rouse

Margaret Rouse is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical, business audience. Over the past twenty years her explanations have appeared on TechTarget websites and she's been cited as an authority in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine and Discovery Magazine.Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages. If you have a suggestion for a new definition or how to improve a technical explanation, please email Margaret or contact her…