The Jargon File - Eric S. Raymond (best books for 8th graders .txt) 📗

the way hackers normally expect things to be. Thus, a

hacker may claim with a straight face that `according to religious

law' is not the canonical meaning of `canonical'.

Node:card walloper, Next:[2450]careware, Previous:[2451]canonical,

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card walloper n.

An EDP programmer who grinds out batch programs that do stupid things

like print people's paychecks. Compare [2453]code grinder. See also

[2454]punched card, [2455]eighty-column mind.

Node:careware, Next:[2456]cargo cult programming, Previous:[2457]card

walloper, Up:[2458]= C =

careware /keir'weir/ n.

A variety of [2459]shareware for which either the author suggests that

some payment be made to a nominated charity or a levy directed to

charity is included on top of the distribution charge. Syn.

[2460]charityware; compare [2461]crippleware, sense 2.

Node:cargo cult programming, Next:[2462]cascade,

Previous:[2463]careware, Up:[2464]= C =

cargo cult programming n.

A style of (incompetent) programming dominated by ritual inclusion of

code or program structures that serve no real purpose. A cargo cult

programmer will usually explain the extra code as a way of working

around some bug encountered in the past, but usually neither the bug

nor the reason the code apparently avoided the bug was ever fully

understood (compare [2465]shotgun debugging, [2466]voodoo

programming).

The term `cargo cult' is a reference to aboriginal religions that grew

up in the South Pacific after World War II. The practices of these

cults center on building elaborate mockups of airplanes and military

style landing strips in the hope of bringing the return of the

god-like airplanes that brought such marvelous cargo during the war.

Hackish usage probably derives from Richard Feynman's characterization

of certain practices as "cargo cult science" in his book "Surely

You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!" (W. W. Norton & Co, New York 1985, ISBN

0-393-01921-7).

Node:cascade, Next:[2467]case and paste, Previous:[2468]cargo cult

programming, Up:[2469]= C =

cascade n.

A huge volume of spurious error-message output produced by a

compiler with poor error recovery. Too frequently, one trivial syntax

error (such as a missing )' or}') throws the parser out of synch so

that much of the remaining program text is interpreted as garbaged or

ill-formed. 2. A chain of Usenet followups, each adding some trivial

variation or riposte to the text of the previous one, all of which is

reproduced in the new message; an [2470]include war in which the

object is to create a sort of communal graffito.

Node:case and paste, Next:[2471]casters-up mode,

Previous:[2472]cascade, Up:[2473]= C =

case and paste n.

[from `cut and paste'] 1. The addition of a new [2474]feature to an

existing system by selecting the code from an existing feature and

pasting it in with minor changes. Common in telephony circles because

most operations in a telephone switch are selected using case

statements. Leads to [2475]software bloat.

In some circles of EMACS users this is called `programming by Meta-W',

because Meta-W is the EMACS command for copying a block of text to a

kill buffer in preparation to pasting it in elsewhere. The term is

condescending, implying that the programmer is acting mindlessly

rather than thinking carefully about what is required to integrate the

code for two similar cases.

At [2476]DEC (now Compaq), this is sometimes called `clone-and-hack'

coding.

Node:casters-up mode, Next:[2477]casting the runes,

Previous:[2478]case and paste, Up:[2479]= C =

casters-up mode n.

[IBM, prob. fr. slang belly up] Yet another synonym for `broken' or

`down'. Usually connotes a major failure. A system (hardware or

software) which is `down' may be already being restarted before the

failure is noticed, whereas one which is `casters up' is usually a

good excuse to take the rest of the day off (as long as you're not

responsible for fixing it).

Node:casting the runes, Next:[2480]cat, Previous:[2481]casters-up

mode, Up:[2482]= C =

casting the runes n.

What a [2483]guru does when you ask him or her to run a particular

program and type at it because it never works for anyone else; esp.

used when nobody can ever see what the guru is doing different from

what J. Random Luser does. Compare [2484]incantation, [2485]runes,

[2486]examining the entrails; also see the AI koan about Tom Knight in

"[2487]Some AI Koans" (Appendix A).

A correspondent from England tells us that one of ICL's most talented

systems designers used to be called out occasionally to service

machines which the [2488]field circus had given up on. Since he knew

the design inside out, he could often find faults simply by listening

to a quick outline of the symptoms. He used to play on this by going

to some site where the field circus had just spent the last two weeks

solid trying to find a fault, and spreading a diagram of the system

out on a table top. He'd then shake some chicken bones and cast them

over the diagram, peer at the bones intently for a minute, and then

tell them that a certain module needed replacing. The system would

start working again immediately upon the replacement.

Node:cat, Next:[2489]catatonic, Previous:[2490]casting the runes,

Up:[2491]= C =

cat [from `catenate' via [2492]Unix cat(1)] vt.

[techspeak] To spew an entire file to the screen or some other

output sink without pause (syn. [2493]blast). 2. By extension, to dump

large amounts of data at an unprepared target or with no intention of

browsing it carefully. Usage: considered silly. Rare outside Unix

sites. See also [2494]dd, [2495]BLT.

Among Unix fans, cat(1) is considered an excellent example of

user-interface design, because it delivers the file contents without

such verbosity as spacing or headers between the files, and because it

does not require the files to consist of lines of text, but works with

any sort of data.

Among Unix haters, cat(1) is considered the [2496]canonical example of

bad user-interface design, because of its woefully unobvious name. It

is far more often used to [2497]blast a file to standard output than

to concatenate two files. The name cat for the former operation is

just as unintuitive as, say, LISP's [2498]cdr.

Of such oppositions are [2499]holy wars made....

Node:catatonic, Next:[2500]cathedral, Previous:[2501]cat, Up:[2502]= C

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catatonic adj.

Describes a condition of suspended animation in which something is so

[2503]wedged or [2504]hung that it makes no response. If you are

typing on a terminal and suddenly the computer doesn't even echo the

letters back to the screen as you type, let alone do what you're

asking it to do, then the computer is suffering from catatonia

(possibly because it has crashed). "There I was in the middle of a

winning game of [2505]nethack and it went catatonic on me! Aaargh!"

Compare [2506]buzz.

Node:cathedral, Next:[2507]cd tilde, Previous:[2508]catatonic,

Up:[2509]= C =

cathedral n.,adj.

[see [2510]bazaar for derivation] The `classical' mode of software

engineering long thought to be necessarily implied by [2511]Brooks's

Law. Features small teams, tight project control, and long release

intervals. This term came into use after analysis of the Linux

experience suggested there might be something wrong (or at least

incomplete) in the classical assumptions.

Node:cd tilde, Next:[2512]CDA, Previous:[2513]cathedral, Up:[2514]= C

=

cd tilde /C-D til-d*/ vi.

To go home. From the Unix C-shell and Korn-shell command cd ~, which

takes one to one's $HOME (cd with no arguments happens to do the same

thing). By extension, may be used with other arguments; thus, over an

electronic chat link, cd ~coffee would mean "I'm going to the coffee

machine."

Node:CDA, Next:[2515]cdr, Previous:[2516]cd tilde, Up:[2517]= C =

CDA /C-D-A/

The "Communications Decency Act" of 1996, passed on [2518]Black

Thursday as section 502 of a major telecommunications reform bill. The

CDA made it a federal crime in the USA to send a communication which

is "obscene, lewd, lascivious, filthy, or indecent, with intent to

annoy, abuse, threaten, or harass another person." It also threatened

with imprisonment anyone who "knowingly" makes accessible to minors

any message that "describes, in terms patently offensive as measured

by contemporary community standards, sexual or excretory activities or

organs".

While the CDA was sold as a measure to protect minors from the

putative evils of pornography, the repressive political aims of the

bill were laid bare by the Hyde amendment, which intended to outlaw

discussion of abortion on the Internet.

To say that this direct attack on First Amendment free-speech rights

was not well received on the Internet would be putting it mildly. A

firestorm of protest followed, including a February 29th mass

demonstration by thousands of netters who turned their [2519]home

pages black for 48 hours. Several civil-rights groups and

computing/telecommunications companies mounted a constitutional

challenge. The CDA was demolished by a strongly-worded decision handed

down on in 8th-circuit Federal court and subsequently affirmed by the

U.S. Supreme Court on 26 June 1997 (`White Thursday'). See also

[2520]Exon.

Node:cdr, Next:[2521]chad, Previous:[2522]CDA, Up:[2523]= C =

cdr /ku'dr/ or /kuh'dr/ vt.

[from LISP] To skip past the first item from a list of things

(generalized from the LISP operation on binary tree structures, which

returns a list consisting of all but the first element of its

argument). In the form `cdr down', to trace down a list of elements:

"Shall we cdr down the agenda?" Usage: silly. See also [2524]loop

through.

Historical note: The instruction format of the IBM 704 that hosted the

original LISP implementation featured two 15-bit fields called the

address' anddecrement' parts. The term `cdr' was originally

Contents of Decrement part of Register'. Similarly,car' stood for

`Contents of Address part of Register'.

The cdr and car operations have since become bases for formation of

compound metaphors in non-LISP contexts. GLS recalls, for example, a

programming project in which strings were represented as linked lists;

the get-character and skip-character operations were of course called

CHAR and CHDR.

Node:chad, Next:[2525]chad box, Previous:[2526]cdr, Up:[2527]= C =

chad /chad/ n.

[common] The perforated edge strips on printer paper, after they

have been separated from the printed portion. Also called

[2528]selvage, [2529]perf, and [2530]ripoff. 2. obs. The confetti-like

paper bits punched out of cards or paper tape; this has also been

called chaff',computer confetti', and `keypunch droppings'. It's

reported that this was very old Army slang, and it may now be

mainstream; it has been reported seen (1993) in directions for a

card-based voting machine in California.

Historical note: One correspondent believes `chad' (sense 2) derives

from the Chadless keypunch (named for its inventor), which cut little

u-shaped tabs in the card to make a hole when the tab folded back,

rather than punching out a circle/rectangle; it was clear that if the

Chadless keypunch didn't make them, then the stuff that other

keypunches made had to be `chad'. There is a legend that the word was

originally acronymic, standing for "Card Hole Aggregate Debris", but

this has all the earmarks of a [2531]backronym.

Node:chad box, Next:[2532]chain, Previous:[2533]chad, Up:[2534]= C =

chad box n.

A metal box about the size of a lunchbox (or in some models a large

wastebasket), for collecting the [2535]chad (sense 2) that accumulated

in [2536]Iron Age card punches. You had to open the covers of the card

punch periodically and empty the chad box. The [2537]bit bucket was

notionally the equivalent device in the CPU enclosure, which was

typically across the room in another great gray-and-blue box.

Node:chain, Next:[2538]channel, Previous:[2539]chad box, Up:[2540]= C

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chain

vi. [orig. from BASIC's CHAIN statement] To hand off execution to a

child or successor without going through the [2541]OS command

interpreter that invoked it. The state of the parent program is lost

and there is no returning to it. Though this facility used to be

common on memory-limited micros and is still widely supported for

backward compatibility, the jargon usage is semi-obsolescent; in

particular, most Unix programmers will think of this as an [2542]exec.

Oppose the more modern `subshell'. 2. n. A series of linked data areas

within an operating system or application. `Chain rattling' is the

process of repeatedly running through the linked data areas searching

for one which is of interest to the executing program. The implication

is that there is a very large number of links on the chain.

Node:channel, Next:[2543]channel