Compiler Output – Why is it Called Object Code?

Language agnostic refers to aspects of programming that are independent of any specific programming language. At least, that's how I've heard it used for the last thirty years.

The word "agnostic" is derived from the ancient Greek for "don't know". So something which is "language agnostic" doesn't need to know about computer languages; it means the same thing as language independent. Things that would be language agnostic include algorithms, or Agile, or a runtime library with bindings to many languages.

Some Mac OS X features are not language agnostic, because they're really designed to be used from Objective C, can only be used with difficulty from C or C++, and don't even have bindings for many languages.

There can also be a subtext to using "language agnostic" rather than other terms.

In colloquial English, someone who says they're "agnostic" means they are neither religious nor an atheist: they "don't know" about God. This is usually verbal code for "I don't like to talk about religion, so don't try to convert me."

So sometimes when people talk about being "language agnostic", they're trying to stay out of arguments about what computer language is better.

I took a very pleasant tour through W3C, Google, and Wikipedia and finally found the answer: an annotated XML spec where we find an excerpt of an email from the inventor of the name, James Clark, an email from chairman Jon Bosak who suggested to use the X letter, and some other ideas for names and the final votes:

Votes | Acronym | Full Name
------+---------+--------------------
5     | XML     | Extensible Markup Language
4     | MAGMA   | Minimal Architecture for Generalized Markup Applications
3     | SLIM    | Structured Language for Internet Markup
1     | MGML    | Minimal Generalized Markup Language

This is Jon Bosak's reply to James Clark's suggestion to name it "Extensible Markup Language" and gave birth to the acronym:

In my opinion, the U-combinations won't fly, but if we allow "X" to stand for "extensible", then I could live with (and even come to love) XML as an acronym for "extensible markup language", and I hereby now throw it into the list of current proposals.

^{(Emphasis mine)}

Some bonus - from some old reports of the XML Special Interest Group that I found while looking for some original quote that could answer the question:

M.15 Should the spec refer to XML as "The Extensible Markup Language" or as "Extensible Markup Language" without a definite article (e.g. in the first sentence)?

The WG elected to give no guidance to the editors on this issue (in the full expectation that the result would depend on which editor touched the file last).

Rationale: after several minutes' discussion and increasing hilarity, no consensus had been reached, but the end of the allotted time for the conference call had.