computer Jargon: #1 archaic and elder terms.

noun. The archtypal computer programmer who is self taught and usually highly idiosyncratic

noun. the end user for whom most computers are designed. the lowest common denominator. someone who knows nothing about the computer they are operating except how to type run or double click the app icon.

adjective. what might be the best thing that can be said about any program, defined as tight, smart, does far more than it has any right to based on the number of instructions involved, and tends toward robustness as opposed to frailty. Will not crash at the drop of a hat. implies an asthetic quality of near perfection. implies creativity in the programmer

adjective. poorly built, overly complex. oddball, sore thumb. said of software that usually works but doesn't shine even for all the work that went into it.

noun. a quickly thrown together solution to a problem, that works, but is inelegant and unattractive. might be considered temporary until it can be improved. differentiated from the preceding entry by the fact that it's usually done on the fly at the time of need without a whole lot of planning.

noun. what a platform or program is said to be suffering from due to an over abundance of new 'functionality' added, and thus have become inelegant. extreme forms of this causes bugs and crashes due to conflicting code.

noun. the issue that arises when a program doesn't know how to stop itself, or its termination point is ill defined. can also mean not knowing when to stop adding supposed functionality, rather than starting over with a completely new and better design. what one runs into when one attempts to do one thing too many times or to many things at one time.

verb phrase. how a coder or programmer programs at the deepest level, ie in hexidecimal. Considered to be a lost skill of the hermits and mystics of the computer age. What a Real Programmer does.

noun. large fast computers used to crunch numbers: IBM mainframes, Convexen, Crays

noun The notional era of such things. those big, batch-processed, water-cooled mainframes, that required raised false floors to allow for giant cables, and only special white coated 'scientists (monks)' were allowed anywhere near them.

acronym: RTFM. What an experienced coder says to someone who asks him/her a simple question they could find the answer to on their own with a few moments of research. What does it stand for?

noun. archaic term for Bits/second

noun. archaic term for the random jumble of letters numbers and symbols that populates a screen when someone tries to call a modem line

noun. notional life energy of a computer, that when escapes, indicates the true death of a cpu.

noun. the first metasyntactic variable

noun. the second metasyntactic variable unless you are at Stanford University

noun. the second metasyntactic variable at Stanford university