9212osd (01/26/83)
OK, I got the definition of misfeature from Paul Rubin who has a copy of the dictionary I should have. Here it is... ___________________________________________________ >From nuucp Tue Jan 25 13:53:16 1983 >From phr Tue Jan 25 13:49:02 1983 remote from allegra To: houxa!9212osd Subject: re: misfeature Status: R The MIT Hacker's Dictionary gives the following definitions: FEATURE n. 1. A surprising property of a program. Occasionally docu- mented. To call a property a feature sometimes means the author of the program did not consider the particular case, and the program makes an unexpected, although not strictly speaking an incorrect response. See BUG. "That's not a bug, that's a feature!" A bug can be changed to a feature by documenting it. 2. A well-known and beloved property; a facility. Sometimes features are planned, but are called crocks by others. An approximately correct spectrum: (These terms are all used to describe programs or portions thereof, except for the first two, which are included for completeness.) CRASH STOPPAGE BUG SCREW LOSS MISFEATURE CROCK KLUGE HACK WIN FEATURE PERFECTION (The last is never actually attained.) MISFEATURE n. A feature which eventually screws someone, possibly because it is not adequate for a new situation which has evolved. It is not the same as a bug because fixing it involves a gross philosophical change to the structure of the system involved. Often a former feature becomes a misfeature because a tradeoff was made whose parameters subsequently changed (possibly only in the judgment of the implementors). "Well, yeah, it's kind of a misfeature that file names are limited to six characters, but we're stuck with it for now." ___________________________________________________________ Is demisfeaturize in the hacker's dictionary? My most recent assignment could be described with that word. Orlando Sotomayor-Diaz BTL-Holmdel houxa!9212osd
mmt (01/28/83)
OED- Misfeature: a distorted feature; a bad feature or trait. In designing and debugging the time-sharing system for the PDP-9T, we used ``bug'' for the things that caused problems because of coding errors and the like. These could be fixed if found. The word for problem-causing things embedded in the design was ``beast''. We still use the term. For example, DEC's RSX operating system is an attempt to program around a basic beast, whereas many of the problems in UNIX are bugs. Martin Taylor