Jargon File: Difference between revisions

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The ''Jargon File'' (also called ''The Hacker's Jargon File'') is a dictionary of computer slang which was originally in plaintext format and is now available as HTML. It also includes a lot of computer hacker folklore, both in the appendixes and as part of the main text of the entries. The file originated in 1975, at a time when computers were only used by a few specialists. It was originally published in book form as ''The Hacker's Dictionary'' in 1983, edited by Guy L. Steele Jr.

The ''Jargon File'' (also called ''The Hacker's Jargon File'') is a dictionary of computer slang which was originally in plaintext format and is now available as [[HTML]]. It also includes a lot of computer hacker folklore, both in the appendixes and as part of the main text of the entries. The file originated in 1975, at a time when computers were only used by a few specialists. It was originally published in book form as ''The Hacker's Dictionary'' in 1983, edited by Guy L. Steele Jr.

At this point, the university AI labs that spawned the Jargon File were dying, and the Jargon File fell into disuse. It was picked up again by Eric Raymond in 1990; he maintained the file, adding new Internet-related material, and published several revisions in 1991, 1993 and 1996 as ''The New Hacker's Dictionary'', though not without controversy ([http://slashdot.org/articles/03/06/08/1534249.shtml Raymond was accused of writing material that's more true of himself than of hackers in general]).

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* [[Astroturf]]: Source of one of the [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/A/astroturfing.html earliest definitions] of sense in which we present it.

* [[CamelCase]]: The Jargon File definition varies from modern usage -- what ATT and many others recognize as "CamelCase", the File calls [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/B/BiCapitalization.html BiCapitalization]. According to the File, "true" [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/C/camelCase.html camelCase] requires the first letter be lowercase, so as to provide a "hump" in the middle of the word.

* [[Canon]]: Source of the [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/C/canonical.html canonical definition] of "canonical", as used in most non-religious contexts today.

* [[Ha Ha Only Serious]]: Defined by the file.

* [[Ice Cream Koan]]: Several such sayings, in which reference to the phrase "ice cream koan" was [[Trope Namer|coined]], originated at MIT in the 1970s and found their way into the Jargon File. One example:

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The machine worked. }}

:{{spoiler|It helps if you wait five or more seconds.}} (It also plays on the absurdity that understanding alone is enough to make the exact same behavior work.)

* [[Layman's Terms]]: Despite being written by hackers for hackers, its definitions very often present abstruse or obscure tech concepts in plan, simple-to-understand terms.

* [[Names Given to Computers]]: The real-life [[Cthulhu Mythos|Shub-Internet]] was named after a joke in the Jargon File and operated as a server in the Pentagon for a number of years. Obviously a very silly type-6, relating to the Internet's origins as a US Defense Department project.

* [[Neologism]]: The source or earliest documentation of many terms that later entered widespread use.

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* [[Too Many Cooks Spoil the Soup]]: The file contains an entry which states that "Adding manpower to a late project makes it later", with mathematical justification; dividing a task among N people gets the work done in ''O''(N) time, but actually coordinating that work and getting it merged back into a completed project takes ''O''(N^2) because of duplication, intercommunication problems (two people on a project have one line of communication (A<->B); four people have six), and general laziness (if there's a hundred people on a task, there will be a few who think they don't need to pull their weight).

* [[Sock Puppet]]: As with ''Astroturf'' above, the File is one of the first, if not the first, formal definition of the usage as we document it.

* [[Technology Marches On]]: Even as of the late 1990s updates it was already more of a historical document than a living one.

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* [[Too Many Cooks Spoil the Soup]]: The file contains an entry -- [http://www.catb.org/jargon/html/B/Brookss-Law.html Brooks's Law] -- which states that "Adding manpower to a late project makes it later", with mathematical justification; dividing a task among N people gets the work done in ''O''(N) time, but actually coordinating that work and getting it merged back into a completed project takes ''O''(N^2) because of duplication, intercommunication problems (two people on a project have one line of communication (A<->B); four people have six), and general laziness (if there's a hundred people on a task, there will be a few who think they don't need to pull their weight).

* [[Words Do Not Make the Magic]]: See the [[Ice Cream Koan]] quoted above.

* [[Yiddish as a Second Language]]: Hacker parlance is absolutely ''full'' of Yiddish and Yiddish-derived words -- chainik (despite the Jargon File identifying it as Russian), DRECNET, farkled, foo, glitch and kludge, even (and especially) "hack" itself, just to name a few.