Alpine snowboaring is a small niche of the sport of snowboarding. It is typically practised with hard plastic shelled boots called "hardboots" and carving or race-oriented snowboards. Loosely, it is the pursuit of snowboarding mostly on the ground, in the forward direction, with the primary goal of making clean, smooth turns. By this definition, alpine snowboards technically came first, and freestyle snowboards came second. However the term "alpine" has come to be mostly associated with snowboarding in hardboots, as they are the choice for people seeking the purest carved turn. Lately, the terms "Alpine Snowboarding" and "Hardboot Snowboarding", or just "Hardbooting" have become synonymous.