interface

Pluralinterfaces

Formsinterfaces, interfacing, interfaced

1. 1
   nouncountable

   The connection through which a person interacts with a machine or computer.

   Designers spent months refining the interface so first-time users could navigate it easily.

   A well-designed interface hides technical complexity behind familiar buttons and icons.

   Note

   Here one side of the boundary is a person. The interface is everything that carries the exchange, from the input controls to the output displays. In use it most often appears as user interface, and options are selected via or through it. Compare the system-to-system sense, where both sides are machines.

2. 2
   nouncountable

   The point of contact or connection between two things or groups.

   Customer service sits at the interface between a business and the people who buy from it.

   The skin forms the interface between the body and the outside world.

   Similarboundary, junction, border, frontier

   Note

   The general sense the technical ones narrow down. The word joins inter-, "between", to face in its old meaning of "shape" or "form", so an interface is the form a meeting between two sides takes. It usually comes with between and both sides named, as in the interface between a company and the press. It often follows serve as when a person or office does the connecting.

3. 3
   nouncountable

   The point where two systems or subsystems connect and exchange data or signals.

   The satellite communicates with the ground station through a standardized interface.

   A clean interface between modules lets one team update its part without breaking the others.

   Similarconnection, link

   Note

   Engineers mean the agreed boundary between systems: the specification of how signals, data or control cross from one side to the other, so that each side can be built independently. Modifiers name what the boundary runs through or how it is fixed. An air interface carries data over the air to a remote system, and a standardized interface is one any conforming system can meet.

4. 4
   nouncountable

   The connection between parts of software, including the public sections of an object or module that other code may use.

   Programmers interact with the module only through its published interface, never its private internals.

   A stable interface lets developers rewrite the underlying code without disturbing anything that depends on it.

   Note

   A programmer's word for the public face of software: the members of an object or module that outside code may use, while the implementation stays hidden behind them. It sits close to the declared contract, and the two blur in talk of traits and mixins. There an interface carries only method signatures, a trait adds full method definitions, and a mixin goes further still.

5. 5
   nouncountable

   A piece of code that defines a set of operations which other code is required to implement.

   A class that implements the interface must provide code for every method it declares.

   Defining a shared interface lets unrelated classes be used in the same way.

   Note

   A contract written in code. It lists method signatures, supplies no implementations, and obliges any class that adopts it to provide its own. The verb that goes with it is implement: a class implements an interface, and several classes can implement the same one, as Audio and Video both implement IPlayable. That shared contract is what lets unrelated classes be used in the same way.

6. 6
   nouncountable

   A thin layer or boundary between two different substances, or between two phases of the same substance.

   Surface tension arises at the interface between a liquid and the air above it.

   At zero degrees Celsius, ice and water meet along a solid-liquid interface.

   Similarboundary, surface

   Note

   For the physical scientist this is the place where properties change sharply over a very small distance. It is usually named by its two sides, hyphenated in front of the noun: an oil-water interface, a water-air interface. The boundary need not separate different substances, because ice and water are one substance in two phases and still meet at an interface.

7. 7
   verbtransitive or intransitive

   To connect to a device or system through a shared point of connection so the two can work together.

   New devices must interface smoothly with existing equipment.

   The app interfaces with several payment systems at once.

   Similarconnect, integrate, communicate, interact, link

   Note

   The verb works both with and without an object. With an object, one thing is connected to another. Without one, it usually takes with, as in the app interfaces with several payment systems. Compare the building sense, which is about making the interface rather than connecting through it.

8. 8
   verbintransitive

   To act or serve as a connecting point between two systems, groups, or things.

   Front-desk staff interface between guests and the various hotel departments.

   The translation layer interfaces between the old database and the new application.

   Similarmediate, liaise

9. 9
   verbtransitive

   To build or construct a connecting point for a device, system, or program.

   Developers must interface each new sensor before it joins the network.

   The contractor interfaced the heating system with the building's controls.

   Similarconnect, link, integrate

10. 10
    verbintransitive

    To meet with others for discussion, especially in a business setting.

    Department heads interface every Monday to review progress.

    He interfaces with suppliers before finalizing any order.

    Similarmeet, confer, liaise, consult

    Note

    Business jargon stretches the technical verb to people. To interface is simply to meet and confer, as in Let's interface on Wednesday, and with marks the other party (interfaces with suppliers). It is a vogue extension of the technical sense and is often criticized as corporate buzzword, so in careful writing plainer verbs such as meet or talk usually serve better.

11. 11
    nouncountable

    A block of code that declares the connection point between a class and the code that interacts with it.

    Each class ships with an interface that lists the methods other code may call.

    The compiler checks every call against the declared interface before linking.

    Note

    A declaration rather than a contract. In certain languages a class comes with a block that declares the members through which outside code may reach it, and that block is called its interface. It belongs to one class and describes that class's own boundary. In this it differs from the implemented contract, which many classes can share.

12. 12
    nouncountable

    The internal surface of a coiled protein.

    Hydrophobic residues cluster at the interface of the coiled protein, away from water.

    Mutations affecting the interface can stop the protein from folding correctly.

    Note

    A biochemist's term that comes in a pair. Its partner, exoface, names the protein's outward surface, which faces the surrounding solvent. The interface is the side turned toward the core. The pairing makes the face in the word literal again: one face looks in and the other looks out.

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