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inch. It seldom helps. The code grinder's milieu is about as far from hackerdom as one can get and still touch a computer; the term connotes pity. See Real World, suit. 2. Used of or to a hacker, a really serious slur on the person's creative ability; connotes a design style characterized by primitive technique, rule-boundedness, brute force, and utter lack of imagination. Compare card walloper; contrast hacker, Real Programmer. |
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Code of the Greeks n. see geek code. |
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code police n. [by analogy with George Orwell's 'thought police'] A mythical team of Gestapo-like storm troopers that might burst into one's office and arrest one for violating programming style rules. May be used either seriously, to underline a claim that a particular style violation is dangerous, or ironically, to suggest that the practice under discussion is condemned mainly by anal-retentive weenies. "Dike out that goto or the code police will get you!" The ironic usage is perhaps more common. |
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codes n. [scientific computing] Programs. This usage is common in people who hack supercomputers and heavy-duty number-crunching, rare to unknown elsewhere (if you say "codes" to hackers outside scientific computing, their first association is likely to be "and cyphers"). |
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codewalker n. A program component that traverses other programs for a living. Compilers have codewalkers in their front ends; so do cross-reference generators and some database front ends. Other utility programs that try to do too much with source code may turn into codewalkers. As in "This new vgrind feature would require a codewalker to implement." |
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coefficient of X n. Hackish speech makes heavy use of pseudo-mathematical metaphors. Four particularly important ones involve the terms coefficient, factor, index, and quotient. They are often loosely applied to things you cannot really be quantitative about, but there are subtle distinctions among them that convey information about the way the speaker mentally models whatever he or she is describing. |
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Foo factor and foo quotient tend to describe something for which the issue is one of presence or absence. The canonical example is fudge factor. It's not important how much you're fudging; the term simply acknowledges that some fudging is needed. You might talk of liking a movie for its silliness factor. Quotient tends to imply that the property is a ratio of two opposing factors: "I would have won except for my luck quotient." This could also be "I would have won except for the luck factor", but using quotient emphasizes |
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