Re: [microsound] Re: microsound Digest 23 Aug 2000 15:47:56 -0000 Issue 142

[david turgeon <david.t@xxxxxxxx>]

> >cruft! i've just looked in my dictionary and didn't find it there, but
> >what a great word!!!
> it's a word that's used a lot in software development (at least once a
> day)...I think I read a good explanation of this word in  "In the
> Beginning...Was the Command Line" by Neal Stephenson...but there may also
> be a definition in the Hackers Dictionary...

& indeed there is...

http://earthspace.net/jargon/jargon_18.html#SEC25

~~ snip ~~

cruft /kruhft/ 

[back-formation from crufty] 1. /n./ An unpleasant substance. The dust
that gathers under your bed is cruft; the TMRC Dictionary correctly
noted that attacking it with a broom only produces more. 2. /n./ The
results of shoddy construction. 3. /vt./ [from `hand cruft', pun on
`hand craft'] To write assembler code for something normally (and
better) done by a compiler (see hand-hacking). 4. /n./ Excess;
superfluous junk; used esp. of redundant or superseded code. 5.
[University of Wisconsin] /n./ Cruft is to hackers as gaggle is to
geese; that is, at UW one properly says "a cruft of hackers". 

cruft together /vt./ 

(also `cruft up') To throw together something ugly but temporarily
workable. Like /vt./ kluge up, but more pejorative. "There isn't any
program now to reverse all the lines of a file, but I can probably cruft
one together in about 10 minutes." See hack together, hack up, kluge up,
crufty. 

cruftsmanship /kruhfts'm*n-ship / /n./ 

[from cruft] The antithesis of craftsmanship. 

crufty /kruhf'tee/ /adj./ 

[origin unknown; poss. from `crusty' or `cruddy'] 1. Poorly built,
possibly over-complex. The canonical example is "This is standard old
crufty DEC software". In fact, one fanciful theory of the origin of
`crufty' holds that was originally a mutation of `crusty' applied to DEC
software so old that the `s' characters were tall and skinny, looking
more like `f' characters. 2. Unpleasant, especially to the touch, often
with encrusted junk. Like spilled coffee smeared with peanut butter and
catsup. 3. Generally unpleasant. 4. (sometimes spelled `cruftie') /n./ A
small crufty object (see frob); often one that doesn't fit well into the
scheme of things. "A LISP property list is a good place to store
crufties (or, collectively, random cruft)." 

This term is one of the oldest in the jargon and no one is sure of its
etymology, but it is suggestive that there is a Cruft Hall at Harvard
University which is part of the old physics building; it's said to have
been the physics department's radar lab during WWII. To this day (early
1993) the windows appear to be full of random techno-junk. MIT or
Lincoln Labs people may well have coined the term as a knock on the
competition. 

~~ snip ~~

may i suggest reading that book, either in html (at that address &
elsewhere) or by purchasing the actual book.  it's a wonderful read.

~ david
--Boundary_(ID_PhzV1iGZWfjkYCsCKHmwuA)
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