The Hacker's Dictionary, - [best reads of all time .txt] 📗

term {distribution} may imply that special tools or more stringent conditions on the host environment are required.

:klone: /klohn/ n. See {clone}, sense 4.

:kludge: /kluhj/ n. Common (but incorrect) variant of {kluge}, q.v.

:kluge: /klooj/ [from the German klug', clever] 1. n. A Rube Goldberg (or Heath Robinson) device, whether in hardware or software. (A long-agoDatamation' article by Jackson Granholme said: "An ill-assorted collection of poorly matching parts, forming a distressing whole.") 2. n. A clever programming trick intended to solve a particular nasty case in an expedient, if not clear, manner. Often used to repair bugs. Often involves {ad-hockery} and verges on being a {crock}. In fact, the TMRC Dictionary defined `kludge' as "a crock that works". 3. n.

Something that works for the wrong reason. 4. vt. To insert a kluge into a program. "I've kluged this routine to get around that weird bug, but there's probably a better way." 5. [WPI] n. A feature that is implemented in a {rude} manner.

Nowadays this term is often encountered in the variant spelling kludge'. Reports from {old fart}s are consistent thatkluge' was the original spelling, reported around computers as far back as the mid-1950s and, at that time, used exclusively of hardware kluges. In 1947, the New York Folklore Quarterly' reported a classic shaggy-dog storyMurgatroyd the Kluge Maker' then current in the Armed Forces, in which a `kluge'

was a complex and puzzling artifact with a trivial function.

However, there is reason to believe this slang use may be a decade older. Several respondents have connected it to the brand name of a device called a "Kluge paper feeder" dating back at least to 1935, an adjunct to mechanical printing presses. The Kluge feeder was designed before small, cheap electric motors and control electronics; it relied on a fiendishly complex assortment of cams, belts, and linkages to both power and synchronize all its operations from one motive driveshaft. It was accordingly tempermental, subject to frequent breakdowns, and devilishly difficult to repair --- but oh, so clever! One traditional folk etymology of kluge' makes it the name of a design engineer; in fact,Kluge' is a surname in German, and the designer of the Kluge feeder may well have been the man behind this myth.

The variant kludge' was apparently popularized by the {Datamation} article mentioned above; it was titled "How to Design a Kludge" (February 1962, pages 30 and 31). Some people who encountered the word first in print or on-line jumped to the reasonable but incorrect conclusion that the word should be pronounced /kluhj/ (rhyming withsludge'). The result of this tangled history is a mess; in 1991, many (perhaps even most) hackers pronounce the word correctly as /klooj/ but spell it incorrectly as `kludge' (compare the pronunciation drift of {mung}). Some observers consider this appropriate in view of its meaning.

:kluge around: vt. To avoid a bug or difficult condition by inserting a {kluge}. Compare {workaround}.

:kluge up: vt. To lash together a quick hack to perform a task; this is milder than {cruft together} and has some of the connotations of {hack up} (note, however, that the construction `kluge on'

corresponding to {hack on} is never used). "I've kluged up this routine to dump the buffer contents to a safe place."

:Knights of the Lambda Calculus: n. A semi-mythical organization of wizardly LISP and Scheme hackers. The name refers to a mathematical formalism invented by Alonzo Church, with which LISP

is intimately connected. There is no enrollment list and the criteria for induction are unclear, but one well-known LISPer has been known to give out buttons and, in general, the members

know who they are....

:Knuth: /nooth/ [Donald E. Knuth's `The Art of Computer Programming'] n. Mythically, the reference that answers all questions about data structures or algorithms. A safe answer when you do not know: "I think you can find that in Knuth." Contrast {literature, the}. See also {bible}.

:kremvax: /krem-vaks/ [from the then large number of {USENET}

{VAXen} with names of the form foovax] n. Originally, a fictitious USENET site at the Kremlin, announced on April 1, 1984

in a posting ostensibly originated there by Soviet leader Konstantin Chernenko. The posting was actually forged by Piet Beertema as an April Fool's joke. Other fictitious sites mentioned in the hoax were moskvax and {kgbvax}. This was probably the funniest of the many April Fool's forgeries perpetrated on USENET (which has negligible security against them), because the notion that USENET might ever penetrate the Iron Curtain seemed so totally absurd at the time.

In fact, it was only six years later that the first genuine site in Moscow, demos.su, joined USENET. Some readers needed convincing that the postings from it weren't just another prank.

Vadim Antonov, senior programmer at Demos and the major poster from there up to mid-1991, was quite aware of all this, referred to it frequently in his own postings, and at one point twitted some credulous readers by blandly asserting that he was a hoax!

Eventually he even arranged to have the domain's gateway site named kremvax, thus neatly turning fiction into truth and demonstrating that the hackish sense of humor transcends cultural barriers. [Mr. Antonov also contributed the Russian-language material for this lexicon. --- ESR]

In an even more ironic historical footnote, kremvax became an electronic center of the anti-communist resistance during the bungled hard-line coup of August 1991. During those three days the Soviet UUCP network centered on kremvax became the only trustworthy news source for many places within the USSR. Though the sysops were concentrating on internal communications, cross-border postings included immediate transliterations of Boris Yeltsin's decrees condemning the coup and eyewitness reports of the demonstrations in Moscow's streets. In those hours, years of speculation that totalitarianism would prove unable to maintain its grip on politically-loaded information in the age of computer networking were proved devastatingly accurate --- and the original kremvax joke became a reality as Yeltsin and the new Russian revolutionaries of glasnost' andperestroika' made kremvax one of the timeliest means of their outreach to the West.

:kyrka: /shir'k*/ n. See {feature key}.

= L =

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:lace card: n. obs. A {{punched card}} with all holes punched (also called a whoopee 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 acard knife' --- which you used on the joker first.

: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}.

:languages of choice: n. {C} and {LISP}. Nearly every hacker knows one of these, and most good ones are fluent in both.

Smalltalk and Prolog are also popular in small but influential communities.

There is also a rapidly dwindling category of older hackers with FORTRAN, or even assembler, as their language of choice. They often prefer to be known as {real programmer}s, and other hackers consider them a bit odd (see "{The Story of Mel, a Real Programmer}" in {appendix A}). Assembler is generally no longer considered interesting or appropriate for anything but {HLL}

implementation, {glue}, and a few time-critical and hardware-specific uses in systems programs. FORTRAN occupies a shrinking niche in scientific programming.

Most hackers tend to frown on languages like {{Pascal}} and {{Ada}}, which don't give them the near-total freedom considered necessary for hacking (see {bondage-and-discipline language}), and to regard everything that's even remotely connected with {COBOL} or other traditional {card walloper} languages as a total and unmitigated {loss}.

:larval stage: n. Describes a period of monomaniacal concentration on coding apparently passed through by all fledgling hackers.

Common symptoms include the perpetration of more than one 36-hour {hacking run} in a given week; neglect of all other activities including usual basics like food, sleep, and personal hygiene; and a chronic case of advanced bleary-eye. Can last from 6 months to 2

years, the apparent median being around 18 months. A few so afflicted never resume a more `normal' life, but the ordeal seems to be necessary to produce really wizardly (as opposed to merely competent) programmers. See also {wannabee}. A less protracted and intense version of larval stage (typically lasting about a month) may recur when one is learning a new {OS} or programming language.

:lase: /layz/ vt. To print a given document via a laser printer.

"OK, let's lase that sucker and see if all those graphics-macro calls did the right things."

:laser chicken: n. Kung Pao Chicken, a standard Chinese dish containing chicken, peanuts, and hot red peppers in a spicy pepper-oil sauce. Many hackers call it `laser chicken' for two reasons: It can {zap} you just like a laser, and the sauce has a red color reminiscent of some laser beams.

In a variation on this theme, it