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creeping featurism /kree'ping fee'chr-izm/ n. 1. Describes a systematic tendency to load more chrome and features onto systems at the expense of whatever elegance they may have possessed when originally designed. See also feeping creaturism. ''You know, the main problem with BSD Unix has always been creeping featurism." 2. More generally, the tendency for anything complicated to become even more complicated because people keep saying "Gee, it would be even better if it had this feature too". (See feature.) The result is usually a patchwork because it grew one ad-hoc step at a time, rather than being planned. Planning is a lot of work, but it's easy to add just one extra little feature to help someone and then another and another. When creeping featurism gets out of hand, it's like a cancer. Usually this term is used to describe computer programs, but it could also be said of the federal government, the IRS 1040 form, and new cars. A similar phenomenon sometimes afflicts conscious redesigns; see second-system effect. See also creeping elegance. |
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creeping featuritis /kree'ping fee'-chr- `t s/ n. Variant of creeping featurism, with its own spoonerization: feeping creaturitis. Some people like to reserve this form for the disease as it actually manifests in software or hardware, as opposed to the lurking general tendency in designers' minds. (After all, -ism means 'condition' or 'pursuit of', whereas -itis usually means 'inflammation of'.) |
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cretin /kret'in/ or /kree'tn/ n. Congenital loser; an obnoxious person; someone who can't do anything right. It has been observed that many American hackers tend to favor the British pronunciation /kret'in/ over standard American /kree'tn/; it is thought this may be due to the insidious phonetic influence of Monty Python's Flying Circus. |
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cretinous /kret'n-s/ or /kreet'n-s/ adj. Wrong; stupid; non-functional; very poorly designed. Also used pejoratively of people. See dread high-bit disease for an example. Approximate synonyms: bletcherous, bagbiting losing, rain-damaged. |
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crippleware n. 1. Software that has some important functionality deliberately removed, so as to entice potential users to pay for a working version. 2. [Cambridge] Variety of guiltware that exhorts you to donate to some charity (compare careware, nagware). 3. Hardware deliberately crippled, which can be upgraded to a more expensive model by a trivial change (e.g., cutting a jumper). |
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