bob@cadovax.UUCP (Bob "Kat" Kaplan) (03/11/85)
cw@vaxwaller.UUCP (Carl Weidling) <220@vaxwaller.UUCP> laments: > But what dictionaries define the word kludge? (I'm not even sure > how to spell it because I can't find it in any dictionaries. The word is defined in Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary. It is also to be found in The Book of Jargon, by Don Ethan Miller (MacMillan, 1981). A brief article on the word also appears in the Encyclopedia of Computer Science (ed. by Anthony Ralston, Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1976). In that volume, F. Gruenberger writes as follows: KLUDGE The word "kludge" is a term coined by Jackson Granholm in an article "How to Design a Kludge," in _Datamation_ (February 1962). The definition is given as "an ill-sorted collection of poorly matching parts, forming a distressing whole." The design of every computer contains some anomalies that prove to be annoying to the users and which the designer wishes he had done differently. If there are enough of these, the machine is called a "kludge." By extension, the term has now come to be applied to programs, documentation, and even computer centers, so that the definition is now "an ill-conceived and hence unreliable system that has accumulated through patchwork, expediency, and poor planning." The first kludge article triggered five others ("How to Maintain a Kludge," etc.) in subsequent issues of _Datamation_. Four of the articles may be found in the book, _Faith,_Hope,_and_Parity_, edited by Jack Moshman, Thompson Book Company, 1966. -- Bob Kaplan "Where is it written that we must destroy ourselves?"
swift@reed.UUCP (Theodore Swift) (03/28/85)
In most of the net articles I've read refering to *kludge*, there seem to be few or no references to the word's use in other than a CS/software environment. Being a mostly hardware techy sort, I feel obliged to point out that these definitions are not comprehensive. In hardware-land, kludge is often used (as a noun) as it is in CS, i.e., "ill-fitting parts forming a distressing whole". A "quick-and- dirty" solution to a mechanical or electrical problem (one that does what it needs to, but is understood to be ineligant and temporary) is a kludge. "Kludge" is also used as a verb meaning to throw together a circuit to "patch" a problem or anomaly. Example: "I kludged up something to fix the noise problem, but it'll have to be redesigned". There are probably other forms to be extracted and well-defined, but I can't think of them right now. You might say this article is itself a kludge.... "If the text seems not clear, or that the Author is confused the Reader should assume that something Profound is Couched beneath" _Jonathan Swift, as quoted in Knuth's Vol 3 of CS