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

{loser}, {burble}, {management}, {Stupids}, {SNAFU

Principle}, and {brain-damaged}. English, by the way, is relatively kind; our Moscow correspondent informs us that the corresponding idiom in Russian hacker jargon is `sovok', lit. a tool for grabbing garbage.

:suitable win: n. See {win}.

:suitably small: [perverted from mathematical jargon] adj. An expression used ironically to characterize unquantifiable behavior that differs from expected or required behavior. For example, suppose a newly created program came up with a correct full-screen display, and one publicly exclaimed: "It works!"

Then, if the program dumps core on the first mouse click, one might add: "Well, for suitably small values of `works'." Compare the characterization of pi under {{random numbers}}.

:sun lounge: [Great Britain] n. The room where all the Sun workstations live. The humor in this term comes from the fact that it's also in mainstream use to describe a solarium, and all those Sun workstations clustered together give off an amazing amount of heat.

:sun-stools: n. Unflattering hackerism for SunTools, a pre-X

windowing environment notorious in its day for size, slowness, and misfeatures. {X}, however, is larger and slower; see {second-system effect}.

:sunspots: n. 1. Notional cause of an odd error. "Why did the program suddenly turn the screen blue?" "Sunspots, I guess."

Also the cause of {bit rot} --- from the myth that sunspots will increase {cosmic rays}, which can flip single bits in memory.

See {cosmic rays}, {phase of the moon}.

:superprogrammer: n. A prolific programmer; one who can code exceedingly well and quickly. Not all hackers are superprogrammers, but many are. (Productivity can vary from one programmer to another by three orders of magnitude. For example, one programmer might be able to write an average of 3 lines of working code in one day, while another, with the proper tools, might be able to write 3,000. This range is astonishing; it is matched in very few other areas of human endeavor.) The term `superprogrammer' is more commonly used within such places as IBM

than in the hacker community. It tends to stress na"ive measures of productivity and to underweight creativity, ingenuity, and getting the job done --- and to sidestep the question of whether the 3,000 lines of code do more or less useful work than three lines that do the {Right Thing}. Hackers tend to prefer the terms {hacker} and {wizard}.

:superuser: [UNIX] n. Syn. {root}, {avatar}. This usage has spread to non-UNIX environments; the superuser is any account with all {wheel} bits on. A more specific term than {wheel}.

:support: n. After-sale handholding; something many software vendors promise but few deliver. To hackers, most support people are useless --- because by the time a hacker calls support he or she will usually know the relevant manuals better than the support people (sadly, this is not a joke or exaggeration). A hacker's idea of support' is a t^ete-a-t^ete with the software's designer.

:Suzie COBOL: /soo'zee koh'bol/ 1. [IBM: prob. from Frank Zappa's `Suzy Creamcheese'] n. A coder straight out of training school who knows everything except the value of comments in plain English.

Also (fashionable among personkind wishing to avoid accusations of sexism) Sammy Cobol' or (in some non-IBM circles)Cobol Charlie'.

[proposed] Meta-name for any {code grinder}, analogous to {J. Random Hacker}.

:swab: /swob/ [From the mnemonic for the PDP-11 `SWAp Byte'

instruction, as immortalized in the dd(1)' optionconv=swab'

(see {dd})] 1. vt. To solve the {NUXI problem} by swapping bytes in a file. 2. n. The program in V7 UNIX used to perform this action, or anything functionally equivalent to it. See also {big-endian}, {little-endian}, {middle-endian}, {bytesexual}.

:swap: vt. 1. [techspeak] To move information from a fast-access memory to a slow-access memory (swap out'), or vice versa (swap in'). Often refers specifically to the use of disks as virtual memory'. As pieces of data or program are needed, they are swapped into {core} for processing; when they are no longer needed they may be swapped out again. 2. The jargon use of these terms analogizes people's short-term memories with core. Cramming for an exam might be spoken of as swapping in. If you temporarily forget someone's name, but then remember it, your excuse is that it was swapped out. Tokeep something swapped in' means to keep it fresh in your memory: "I reread the TECO manual every few months to keep it swapped in." If someone interrupts you just as you got a good idea, you might say "Wait a moment while I swap this out", implying that the piece of paper is your extra-somatic memory and if you don't swap the info out by writing it down it will get overwritten and lost as you talk. Compare {page in}, {page out}.

:swap space: n. Storage space, especially temporary storage space used during a move or reconfiguration. "I'm just using that corner of the machine room for swap space."

:swapped in: n. See {swap}. See also {page in}.

:swapped out: n. See {swap}. See also {page out}.

:swizzle: v. To convert external names, array indices, or references within a data structure into address pointers when the data structure is brought into main memory from external storage (also called pointer swizzling'); this may be done for speed in chasing references or to simplify code (e.g., by turning lots of name lookups into pointer dereferences). The converse operation is sometimes termedunswizzling'. See also {snap}.

:sync: /sink/ (var. synch') n., vi. 1. To synchronize, to bring into synchronization. 2. [techspeak] To force all pending I/O to the disk; see {flush}, sense 2. 3. More generally, to force a number of competing processes or agents to a state that would besafe' if the system were to crash; thus, to checkpoint (in the database-theory sense).

:syntactic sugar: [coined by Peter Landin] n. Features added to a language or other formalism to make it sweeter' for humans, that do not affect the expressiveness of the formalism (compare {chrome}). Used esp. when there is an obvious and trivial translation of thesugar' feature into other constructs already present in the notation. C's a[i]' notation is syntactic sugar for*(a + i)'. "Syntactic sugar causes cancer of the semicolon." --- Alan Perlis.

The variants syntactic saccharine' andsyntactic syrup' are also recorded. These denotes something even more gratuitous, in that syntactic sugar serves a purpose (making something more acceptable to humans) but syntactic saccharine or syrup serves no purpose at all. Compare {candygrammar}.

:sys-frog: /sis'frog/ [the PLATO system] n. Playful variant of sysprog', which is in turn short forsystems programmer'.

:sysadmin: /sis'ad-min/ n. Common contraction of `system admin'; see {admin}.

:sysape: /sysape/ n. A rather derogatory term for a computer operator; a play on {sysop} common at sites that use the banana hierarchy of problem complexity (see {one-banana problem}).

:sysop: /sis'op/ n. [esp. in the BBS world] The operator (and usually the owner) of a bulletin-board system. A common neophyte mistake on {FidoNet} is to address a message to `sysop' in an international {echo}, thus sending it to hundreds of sysops around the world.

:system: n. 1. The supervisor program or OS on a computer. 2. The entire computer system, including input/output devices, the supervisor program or OS, and possibly other software. 3. Any large-scale program. 4. Any method or algorithm. 5. System hacker': one who hacks the system (in senses 1 and 2 only; for sense 3 one mentions the particular program: e.g.,LISP

hacker')

:systems jock: n. See {jock}, (sense 2).

:system mangler: n. Humorous synonym for `system manager', poss.

from the fact that one major IBM OS had a {root} account called SYSMANGR. Refers specifically to a systems programmer in charge of administration, software maintenance, and updates at some site.

Unlike {admin}, this term emphasizes the technical end of the skills involved.

:SysVile: /sis-vi:l'/ n. See {Missed'em-five}.

= T =

=====

:T: /T/ 1. [from LISP terminology for true'] Yes. Used in reply to a question (particularly one asked using the-P'

convention). In LISP, the constant T means true', among other things. Some hackers useT' and NIL' instead ofYes' and `No'

almost reflexively. This sometimes causes misunderstandings. When a waiter or flight attendant asks whether a hacker wants coffee, he may well respond `T', meaning that he wants coffee; but of course he will be brought a cup of tea instead. As it happens, most hackers (particularly those who frequent Chinese restaurants) like tea at least as well as coffee --- so it is not that big a problem.

See {time T} (also {since time T equals minus infinity}).

[techspeak] In transaction-processing circles, an abbreviation for the noun `transaction'. 4. [Purdue] Alternate spelling of {tee}. 5. A dialect of {LISP} developed at Yale.

:tail recursion: n. If you aren't sick of it already, see {tail recursion}.

:talk mode: n. A feature supported by UNIX, ITS, and some other OSes that allows two or more logged-in users to set up a real-time on-line conversation. It combines the immediacy of talking with all the precision (and verbosity) that written language entails.

It is difficult to communicate inflection, though conventions have arisen for some of these (see the section on writing style in the Prependices for details).

Talk mode has a special set of jargon words, used to save typing, which are not used orally. Some of these are identical to (and probably derived from) Morse-code jargon used by ham-radio amateurs since the 1920s.

BCNU