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lace card n. obs. A punched card with all holes punched (also called a whoopee card or ventilator card). Card readers tended to jam when they got to one of these, as the resulting card had too little structural strength to avoid buckling inside the mechanism. Card punches could also jam trying to produce these things owing to power-supply problems. When some practical joker fed a lace card through the reader, you needed to clear the jam with a card knife which you used on the joker first. |
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lamer n. [probably originated in skateboarder slang] Synonym for luser, not used much by hackers but common among warez d00dz, crackers, and phreakers. Oppose elite. Has the same connotations of self-conscious elitism that use of luser does among hackers. |
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Crackers also use it to refer to cracker wannabees. In phreak culture, a lamer is one who scams codes off others rather than doing cracks or really understanding the fundamental concepts. In warez d00dz culture, where the ability to wave around cracked commercial software within days of (or before) release to the commercial market is much esteemed, the lamer might try to upload garbage or shareware or something incredibly old (old in this context is read as a few years to anything older than 3 days). |
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language lawyer n. A person, usually an experienced or senior software engineer, who is intimately familiar with many or most of the numerous restrictions and features (both useful and esoteric) applicable to one or more computer programming languages. A language lawyer is distinguished by the ability to show you the five sentences scattered through a 200-plus-page manual that together imply the answer to your question ''if only you had thought to look there". Compare wizard, legal, legalese. |
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languages of choice n. C, C++, LISP, and Perl. Nearly every hacker knows one of C or LISP, and most good ones are fluent in both. C++, despite some serious drawbacks, is generally preferred to other object-oriented languages (though in 1996 it looks as though Java may soon displace it in the affections of hackers, if not everywhere). Since around 1990 Perl has rapidly been gaining favor, especially as a tool for systems-administration utilities and rapid prototyping. Smalltalk and Prolog are also popular in small but influential communities. |
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There is also a rapidly dwindling category of older hackers with FORTRAN, or even assembler, as their language of choice. They often prefer to |
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