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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 shotgun debugging, voodoo programming). |
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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). |
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cascade n. 1. 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 include war in which the object is to create a sort of communal graffito. |
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case and paste n. [from 'cut and paste'] 1. The addition of a new 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 software bloat. |
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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. |
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At DEC, this is sometimes called clone-and-hack coding. |
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casters-up mode n. [IBM, probably 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). |
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casting the runes n. What a 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 |
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