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The process of unfreezing these thunks is called 'forcing'. 3. A stubroutine, in an overlay programming environment, that loads and jumps to the correct overlay. Compare trampoline. 4. People and activities scheduled in a thunklike manner. "It occurred to me the other day that I am rather accurately modeled by a thunk I frequently need to be forced to completion." paraphrased from a plan file. |
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Historical note: There are a couple of onomatopoeic myths circulating about the origin of this term. The most common is that it is the sound made by data hitting the stack; another holds that the sound is that of the data hitting an accumulator. Yet another suggests that it is the sound of the expression being unfrozen at argument-evaluation time. In fact, according to the inventors, it was coined after they realized (in the wee hours after hours of discussion) that the type of an argument in Algol-60 could be figured out in advance with a little compile-time thought, simplifying the evaluation machinery. In other words, it had 'already been thought of'; thus it was christened a thunk, which is "the past tense of 'think' at two in the morning". |
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tick n. 1. A jiffy (sense 1). 2. In simulations, the discrete unit of time that passes between iterations of the simulation mechanism. In AI applications, this amount of time is often left unspecified, since the only constraint of interest is the ordering of events. This sort of AI simulation is often pejoratively referred to as tick-tick-tick simulation, especially when the issue of simultaneity of events with long, independent chains of causes is handwaved. 3. In the FORTH language, a single quote character. |
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tick-list features n. [Acorn Computers] Features in software or hardware that customers insist on but never use (calculators in desktop TSRs and that sort of thing). The American equivalent would be checklist features, but this jargon sense of the phrase has not been reported. |
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tickle a bug vt. To cause a normally hidden bug to manifest itself through some known series of inputs or operations. "You can tickle the bug in the Paradise VGA card's highlight handling by trying to set bright yellow reverse video." |
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tiger team n. [U.S. military jargon] 1. Originally, a team (of sneakers) whose purpose is to penetrate security, and thus test security measures. These people are paid professionals who do hacker-type tricks, e.g., leave cardboard signs saying "bomb" in critical defense installations, hand-lettered notes saying "Your codebooks have been stolen" (they usually haven't been) inside safes, etc. After a successful penetration, some high-ranking security |
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