colonel@ellie.UUCP (Col. G. L. Sicherman) (05/16/86)
n. 1. In programming, those institutions at which
programming may be used in the same sentence as FORTRAN, COBOL,
RPG, IBM, etc. 2. To programmers, the location of non-programmers
and activities not related to programming. 3. A universe in which
the standard dress is shirt and tie and in which a person's working
hours are defined as 9 to 5. 4. The location of the status quo.
5. Anywhere outside a university.
.QU "Poor fellow, he's left MIT and gone into the real world."
Used pejoratively by those not in
residence there. In conversation, talking of someone who has
entered the real world is not unlike talking about a deceased person.
.DF RECURSION
n. See RECURSION, TAIL RECURSION.
.DF REL
See BIN.
.DF "RIGHT THING, THE"
n. That which is
.QU obviously
the correct or appropriate thing to use, do, say, etc. Use of this
term often implies that in fact reasonable people may disagree.
.QU "Never let your conscience keep you from doing the right thing!"
.QU "What's the right thing for LISP to do when it reads \*0(.)'?"
.DF RUDE
(WPI) adj. 1. (of a program) Badly written. 2. Functionally
poor, e.g. a program which is very difficult to use because of
gratuitously poor (random?) design decisions. See CUSPY.
.DF SACRED
adj. Reserved for the exclusive use of something (a
metaphorical extension of the standard meaning).
.QU "Accumulator 7 is sacred to the UUO handler."
Often means that anyone may look at
the sacred object, but clobbering it will screw whatever it is sacred to.
.DF SAGA
(WPI) n. A cuspy but bogus raving story dealing with N random broken people.
.DF SAV
(save) See BIN.
.DF SEMI
1. n. Abbreviation for
.QU semicolon,
when speaking.
.QU "Commands to GRIND are prefixed by semi-semi-star"
means that the prefix is
.QU ;;* ,
not 1/4 of a star.
2. Prefix with words such as
.QU immediately,
as a qualifier.
.QU "When is the system coming up?"
.QU Semi-immediately.
.DF SERVER
n. A kind of DAEMON which performs a service for the requester,
which often runs on a computer other than the one on which the
server runs.
.DF "SHIFT LEFT (RIGHT) LOGICAL"
[from any of various machines' instruction sets]
1. v. To move oneself to the left (right).
To move out of the way.
2. imper. Get out of that (my) seat!
Usage: often used without the
.QU logical,
or as
.QU "left shift"
instead of
.QU "shift left."
Sometimes heard as LSH (lish), from the PDP-10 instruction set.
.DF SHR
(share or shir) See BIN.
.DF SHRIEK
See EXCL. (Occasional CMU usage.)
.DF 69
adj. Large quantity.
Usage: Exclusive to MIT-AI.
\*QGo away, I have
69 things to do to DDT before worrying about fixing the bug in the
phase of the moon output routine.\*U
[Note: Actually, any number less than 100 but large enough to have
no obvious magic properties will be recognized as a
.QU "large number."
There is no denying that
.QU 69
is the local favorite. I don't know
whether its origins are related to the obscene interpretation, but
I do know that 69 decimal = 105 octal, and 69 hexadecimal = 105
decimal, which is a nice property. \*(emGLS]
.DF SLOP
n. 1. A one-sided fudge factor (q.v.). Often introduced to avoid
the possibility of a fencepost error (q.v.). 2. (used by compiler
freaks) The ratio of code generated by a compiler to hand-compiled
code, minus 1; i.e., the space (or maybe time) you lose because you
didn't do it yourself.
.DF SLURP
v. To read a large data file entirely into core before working on it.
.QU "This program slurps in a 1K-by-1K matrix and does an FFT."
.DF SMART
adj. Said of a program that does the Right Thing (q.v.) in a
wide variety of complicated circumstances. There is a difference
between calling a program smart and calling it intelligent; in
particular, there do not exist any intelligent programs.
.DF "SMOKING CLOVER"
n. A psychedelic color munch due to Gosper.
.DF SMOP
[Simple (or Small) Matter of Programming] n. A piece of code, not
yet written, whose anticipated length is significantly greater than
its complexity. Usage: used to refer to a program that could
obviously be written, but is not worth the trouble.
.DF SNARF
v. To grab, esp. a large document or file for the purpose of
using it either with or without the author's permission. See BLT.
Variant: SNARF (IT) DOWN. (At MIT on ITS, DDT has a command called
:SNARF which grabs a job from another (inferior) DDT.)
.DF "SOFTWARE ROT"
n. Hypothetical disease the existence of which has been
deduced from the observation that unused programs or features will
stop working after sufficient time has passed, even if
.QU "nothing has changed."
Also known as
.QU "bit decay."
.DF SOFTWARILY
adv. In a way pertaining to software.
.QU "The system is softwarily unreliable."
The adjective
.QU softwary
is NOT used. See HARDWARILY.
.DF SOS
1. (ess-oh-ess) n. A losing editor, SON OF STOPGAP. 2. (sahss) v.
Inverse of AOS, from the PDP-10 instruction set.
.DF SPAZZ
1. v. To behave spastically or erratically; more often, to
commit a single gross error.
.QU "Boy, is he spazzing!"
2. n. One who spazzes.
.QU "Boy, what a spazz!"
3. n. The result of spazzing.
.QU "Boy, what a spazz!"
.DF SPLAT
n. 1. Name used in many places (DEC, IBM, and others) for the
ASCII star
.QU * ) (
character. 2. (MIT) Name used by some people for
the ASCII pound-sign
.QU # ) (
character. 3. (Stanford) Name used by
some people for the Stanford/ITS extended ASCII circle-x character.
(This character is also called
.QU circle-x,
.QU blobby,
and
.QU frob,
among other names.) 4. (Stanford) Name for the semi-mythical
extended ASCII circle-plus character. 5. Canonical name for an
output routine that outputs whatever the the local interpretation
of splat is. Usage: nobody really agrees what character
.QU splat
is, but the term is common.
.DF SUPDUP
v. To communicate with another ARPAnet host using the SUPDUP
program, which is a SUPer-DUPer TELNET talking a special display
protocol used mostly in talking to ITS sites. Sometimes
abbreviated to SD.
.DF STATE
n. Condition, situation.
.QU "What's the state of NEWIO?"
.QU "It's winning away."
.QU "What's your state?"
.QU "I'm about to gronk out."
As a special case,
.QU "What's the state of the world?"
(or, more silly,
.QU State-of-world-P? )
means
.QU "What's new?"
or
.QU "What's going on?"
.DF STOPPAGE
n. Extreme lossage (see LOSSAGE) resulting in something
(usually vital) becoming completely unusable.
.DF STY
(pronounced
.QU sty,
not spelled out) n. A pseudo-teletype, which is
a two-way pipeline with a job on one end and a fake keyboard-tty on
the other. Also, a standard program which provides a pipeline from
its controlling tty to a pseudo-teletype (and thence to another
tty, thereby providing a
.QU sub-tty ).
This is MIT terminology; the SAIL and DEC equivalent is PTY.
.DF SUPERPROGRAMMER
n. See
.QU wizard,
.QU hacker.
Usage: rare. (Becoming more common among IBM and Yourdon types.)
.DF SWAPPED
adj. From the use of secondary storage devices to implement
virtual memory in computer systems. Something which is SWAPPED IN
is available for immediate use in main memory, and otherwise is
SWAPPED OUT. Often used metaphorically to refer to people's memories
.QU "I read TECO ORDER every few months to keep the information swapped in." ) (
or to their own availability
.QU "I'll swap you in as soon as I finish looking at this other problem." ). (
.DF SYSTEM
n. 1. The supervisor program on the computer. 2. Any
large-scale program. 3. Any method or algorithm. 4. The way
things are usually done. Usage: a fairly ambiguous word.
.QU "You can't beat the system."
SYSTEM HACKER: one who hacks the system (in sense 1 only; for sense
2 one mentions the particular program: e.g., LISP HACKER)
.DF T
[from LISP terminology for
.QU true ]
1. Yes. Usage: used in reply to
a question, particularly one asked using the
.QU -P
convention). See NIL. 2. See TIME T.
.DF "TAIL RECURSION"
n. See TAIL RECURSION.
.DF "TALK MODE"
See COM MODE.
.DF TASTE
n. (primarily MIT-DMS) The quality in programs which tends to be
inversely proportional to the number of features, hacks, and kluges
programmed into it. Also, TASTY, TASTEFUL, TASTEFULNESS.
.QU "This feature comes in N tasty flavors."
Although TASTEFUL and FLAVORFUL
are essentially synonyms, TASTE and FLAVOR are not.
.DF TECO
(tee\*(fmkoe) [acronym for Text Editor and COrrector] 1. n. A text
editor developed at MIT, and modified by just about everybody. If
all the dialects are included, TECO might well be the single most
prolific editor in use. Noted for its powerful pseudo-programming
features and its incredibly hairy syntax. 2. v. To edit using the
TECO editor in one of its infinite forms; sometimes used to mean
.QU "to edit"
even when not using TECO! Usage: rare at SAIL, where
most people wouldn't touch TECO with a TENEX pole.
[Historical note: DEC grabbed an ancient version of MIT TECO many
years ago when it was still a TTY-oriented editor. By now, TECO at
MIT is highly display-oriented and is actually a language for
writing editors, rather than an editor. Meanwhile, the outside
world's various versions of TECO remain almost the same as the MIT
version of ten years ago. DEC recently tried to discourage its
use, but an underground movement of sorts kept it alive.]
[Since this note was written I found out that DEC tried to force
their hackers by administrative decision to use a hacked up and
generally lobotomized version of SOS instead of TECO, and they
revolted. \*(emMRC]
.DF TELNET
v. To communicate with another ARPAnet host using the TELNET
protocol. TOPS-10 people use the word IMPCOM since that is the
program name for them. Sometimes abbreviated to TN.
.QU "I usually TN over to SAIL just to read the AP News."
.DF TENSE
adj. Of programs, very clever and efficient. A tense piece of
code often got that way because it was highly bummed, but sometimes
it was just based on a great idea. A comment in a clever display
routine by Mike Kazar:
\*QThis routine is so tense it will bring
tears to your eyes. Much thanks to Craig Everhart and James
Gosling for inspiring this hack attack.\*U
A tense programmer is one who produces tense code.
.DF TERPRI
(tur\*(fmpree) [from the LISP 1.5 (and later, MacLISP) function to
start a new line of output] v. To output a CRLF (q.v.).
.DF THEORY
n. Used in the general sense of idea, plan, story, or set of rules.
.QU "What's the theory on fixing this TECO loss?"
.QU "What's the theory on dinner tonight?"
.QU "Chinatown, I guess." ) (
.QU "What's the current theory on letting losers on during the day?"
.QU "The theory behind this change is to fix the following well-known screw..."
.DF THRASH
v. To move wildly or violently, without accomplishing anything
useful. Swapping systems which are overloaded waste most of their
time moving pages into and out of core (rather than performing
useful computation), and are therefore said to thrash.
.DF TICK
n. 1. Interval of time; basic clock time on the computer.
Typically 1/60 second. See JIFFY. 2. In simulations, the discrete
unit of time that passes
.QU between
iterations of the simulation mechanism.
In AI applications, this amount of time is often left
unspecified, since the only constraint of interest is that caused
things happen after their causes. This sort of AI simulation is
often pejoratively referred to as
.QU tick-tick-tick
simulation, especially when the issue of simultaneity of events with
long, independent chains of causes is handwaved.
.DF "TIME T"
n. 1. An unspecified but usually well-understood time, often
used in conjunction with a later time T+1.
.QU "We'll meet on campus at time T or at Louie's at time T+1."
2. SINCE (OR AT) TIME T
EQUALS MINUS INFINITY: A long time ago; for as long as anyone can
remember; at the time that some particular frob was first designed.
.DF TOOL
v.i. To work; to study. See HACK (def #9).
.DF TRAP
1. n. A program interrupt, usually used specifically to refer to
an interrupt caused by some illegal action taking place in the user
program. In most cases the system monitor performs some action
related to the nature of the illegality, then returns control to
the program.
See UUO.
2. v. To cause a trap.
.QU "These instructions trap to the monitor."
Also used transitively to indicate the cause of the trap.
.QU "The monitor traps all input/output instructions."
.DF TTY
(titty) n. Terminal of the teletype variety, characterized by a
noisy mechanical printer, a very limited character set, and poor print quality.
Usage: antiquated (like the TTY's themselves).
Sometimes used to refer to any terminal at all; sometimes used
to refer to the particular terminal controlling a job.
.DF TWEAK
v. To change slightly, usually in reference to a value. Also
used synonymously with TWIDDLE. See FROBNICATE and FUDGE FACTOR.
.DF TWENEX
n. The TOPS-20 operating system by DEC. So named because
TOPS-10 was a typically crufty DEC operating system for the PDP-10.
BBN developed their own system, called TENEX (TEN EXecutive), and
in creating TOPS-20 for the DEC-20 DEC copied TENEX and adapted it
for the 20. Usage: DEC people cringe when they hear TOPS-20
referred to as
.QU Twenex,
but the term seems to be catching on nevertheless.
Release 3 of TOPS-20 is sufficiently different from release 1 that some
(not all) hackers have stopped calling it TWENEX, though the written
abbreviation
.QU 20x
is still used.
.DF TWIDDLE
n. 1. tilde (ASCII 176,
.QU ~ ).
Also called
.QU squiggle,
.QU sqiggle
(sic\*(empronounced
.QU skig\*(fmgul ),
and
.QU twaddle,
but twiddle is by far the most common term. 2. A small and insignificant
change to a program. Usually fixes one bug and generates several
new ones. 3. v. To change something in a small way. Bits, for
example, are often twiddled. Twiddling a switch or knob implies
much less sense of purpose than toggling or tweaking it; see FROBNICATE.
.DF UP
adj. 1. Working, in order.
.QU "The down escalator is up."
2. BRING UP: v. To create a working version and start it.
.QU "They brought up a down system."
.DF USER
n. A programmer who will believe anything you tell him. One who
asks questions. Identified at MIT with
.QU loser
by the spelling
.QU luser.
See REAL USER.
[Note by GLS: I don't agree with RF's definition at all.
Basically, there are two classes of people who work with a program:
there are implementors (hackers) and users (losers). The users are
looked down on by hackers to a mild degree because they don't
understand the full ramifications of the system in all its glory.
(A few users who do are known as real winners.) It is true that
users ask questions (of necessity). Very often they are annoying
or downright stupid.]
.DF UUO
(you-you-oh) [short for
.QU "Un-Used Operation" ]
n. A DEC-10 system monitor call.
The term
.QU "Un-Used Operation"
comes from the fact
that, on DEC-10 systems, monitor calls are implemented as invalid
or illegal machine instructions, which cause traps to the monitor
(see TRAP).
The SAIL manual describing the available UUO's has a
cover picture showing an unidentified underwater object.
See YOYO.
[Note: DEC sales people have since decided that
.QU "Un-Used Operation"
sounds bad, so UUO now stands for
.QU "Unimplemented User Operation." ]
Tenex and Twenex systems use the JSYS machine instruction (q.v.),
which is halfway between a legal machine instruction and a UUO,
since KA-10 Tenices implement it as a hardware instruction which
can be used as an ordinary subroutine call (sort of a
.QU "pure JSR" ).
.DF VANILLA
adj. Ordinary flavor, standard. See FLAVOR. When used of
food, very often does not mean that the food is flavored with
vanilla extract! For example,
.QU "vanilla-flavored wonton soup"
(or simply
.QU "vanilla wonton soup" )
means ordinary wonton soup, as opposed to hot and sour wonton soup.
.DF VAXEN
[from
.QU oxen,
perhaps influenced by
.QU vixen ]
n. pl. The plural of VAX (a DEC machine).
.DF VIRGIN
adj. Unused, in reference to an instantiation of a program.
.QU "Let's bring up a virgin system and see if it crashes again."
Also, by extension, unused buffers and the like within a program.
.DF VIRTUAL
adj. 1. Common alternative to LOGICAL (q.v.), but never used
with compass directions. 2. Performing the functions of. Virtual
memory acts like real memory but isn't.
.DF VISIONARY
n. One who hacks vision (in an AI context, such as the
processing of visual images).
.DF WALDO
[probably taken from the story
.QU Waldo,
by Heinlein, which is
where the term was first used to mean a mechanical adjunct to a
human limb] Used at Harvard, particularly by Tom Cheatham and
students, instead of FOOBAR as a meta-syntactic variable and
general nonsense word. See FOO, BAR, FOOBAR, QUUX.
.DF WALL
[shortened form of HELLO WALL, apparently from the phrase
.QU "up against a blank wall" ]
(WPI) interj. 1. An indication of confusion,
usually spoken with a quizzical tone.
.QU Wall??
2. A request for further explication.
.DF WALLPAPER
n. A file containing a listing (e.g., assembly listing) or
transcript, esp. a file containing a transcript of all or part of a
login session. (The idea was that the LPT paper for such listings
was essentially good only for wallpaper, as evidenced at SAIL where
it was used as such to cover windows.) Usage: not often used now,
esp. since other systems have developed other terms for it (e.g.,
PHOTO on TWENEX). The term possibly originated on ITS, where the
commands to begin and end transcript files are still :WALBEG and
:WALEND, with default file DSK:WALL PAPER.
.DF "WATERBOTTLE SOCCER"
n. A deadly sport practiced mainly by Sussman's graduate students. It,
along with chair bowling, is the most evident manifestation of the
.QU "locker room atmosphere"
said to reign in that sphere. (Sussman doesn't approve.) [As of 11/82,
it's reported that the sport has given way to a new game called
.QU disc-boot,
and Sussman even participates occasionally.]
.DF WEDGED
[from
.QU "head wedged up ass" ]
adj. To be in a locked state,
incapable of proceeding without help. (See GRONK.) Often refers
to humans suffering misconceptions.
.QU "The swapper is wedged."
This term is sometimes used as a synonym for DEADLOCKED (q.v.).
.DF WHAT
n. The question mark character
.QU ? ). (
See QUES. Usage: rare, used particularly in conjunction with WOW.
.DF WHEEL
n. 1. A privilege bit that canonically allows the possessor to
perform any operation on a timesharing system, such as read or
write any file on the system regardless of protections, change or
or look at any address in the running monitor, crash or reload the
system, and kill/create jobs and user accounts. The term was
invented on the TENEX operating system, and carried over to
TOPS-20, Xerox-IFS and others. 2. A person who posses a wheel bit.
.QU "We need to find a wheel to unwedge the hung tape drives."
.DF "WHEEL WARS"
[from LOTS at Stanford University] A period during which
student wheels hack each other by attempting to log each other out
of the system, delete each other's files, or otherwise wreak havoc,
usually at the expense of the lesser users.
.DF WIN
[from MIT jargon] 1. v. To succeed. A program wins if no
unexpected conditions arise. 2. BIG WIN: n. Serendipity.
Emphatic forms: MOBY WIN, SUPER WIN, HYPER-WIN (often used
interjectively as a reply). For some reason SUITABLE WIN is also
common at MIT, usually in reference to a satisfactory solution to a
problem. See LOSE.
.DF WINNAGE
n. The situation when a lossage is corrected, or when
something is winning. Quite rare. Usage: also quite rare.
.DF WINNER
1. n. An unexpectedly good situation, program, programmer or
person. 2. REAL WINNER: Often sarcastic, but also used as high
praise.
.DF WINNITUDE
n. The quality of winning (as opposed to WINNAGE, which is
the result of winning).
.QU "That's really great! Boy, what winnitude!"
.DF WIZARD
n. 1. A person who knows how a complex piece of software or
hardware works; someone who can find and fix his bugs in an
emergency. Rarely used at MIT, where HACKER is the preferred term.
2. A person who is permitted to do things forbidden to ordinary
people, e.g., a
.QU "net wizard"
on a TENEX may run programs which
speak low-level host-imp protocol; an ADVENT wizard at SAIL may
play Adventure during the day.
.DF WORMHOLE
n. A location in a monitor which contains the address of a
routine, with the specific intent of making it easy to substitute a
different routine.
The following quote comes from
.QU "Polymorphic Systems,"
vol. 2, p. 54:
\*QAny type of I/O device can be substituted for the standard device
by loading a simple driver routine for that device and installing
its address in one of the monitor's
.IQ wormholes. *
.br
\l'1i'
.br
*The term
.IQ wormhole
has been used to describe a hypothetical
astronomical situation where a black hole connects to the
.IQ "other side"
of the universe.
When this happens, information can pass
through the wormhole, in only one direction, much as
.IQ assumptions
pass down the monitor's wormholes.\*U
.DF WOW
See EXCL.
.DF XGP
1. n. Xerox Graphics Printer. 2. v. To print something on the XGP.
.QU "You shouldn't XGP such a large file."
.DF XYZZY
[from the Adventure game] adj. See PLUGH.
.DF YOYO
n. DEC service engineers' slang for UUO (q.v.).
Usage: rare at
Stanford and MIT, has been found at random DEC installations.
.DF "YOYO MODE"
n. State in which the system is said to be when it rapidly
alternates several times between being up and being down.
.DF "YU-SHIANG WHOLE FISH"
n. The character gamma (extended SAIL ASCII 11),
which with a loop in its tail looks like a fish. Usage: used
primarily by people on the MIT LISP Machine.
Tends to elicit incredulity from people who hear about it second-hand.
.DF ZERO
v. 1. To set to zero. Usually said of small pieces of data, such
as bits or words. 2. To erase; to discard all data from. Said of
disks and directories, where
.QU zeroing
need not involve actually writing zeroes throughout the area being zeroed.
--
Col. G. L. Sicherman
UU: ...{rocksvax|decvax}!sunybcs!colonel
CS: colonel@buffalo-cs
BI: csdsicher@sunyabva