ARCHIVE: The Real Programmer's Dictionary
When you've been programming for so long that you are nostalgic about the day you first discovered how to call int86() for setting VGA Mode 13h, you can truly understand the conundrums long-term programmers face in their day to day lives. For starters, common words rarely mean the same thing to programmers as non-programmers. Inspired by this /. post, here are 010 words from The Real Programmer's Dictionary.
- Class: You're not gonna oversleep and miss it. Your new boss doesn't really have it. And you don't really have to be a craftsman to make objects out of it.
- Curl: Girls don't do this to their hair. Boys don't do this with dumbbells. But we all do it to webpages.
- Float: Buoys don't do this in stormy seas. Mom doesn't make it with fruits and milk. Just don't use it to hold your currencies.
- Fork: It doesn't split the road. It doesn't help you eat. But it's useful on a parent; just make sure the child's dead before you quit.
- Global: It's not the worldwide sales. It's not the gradual warming. Just don't declare every other variable to be one.
- Port: No sailors here. No Portuguese Wine. Just a socket listener (and a cross-OS compile, and an IEEE spec.)
- Register: Cashiers don't use it. Voters don't bother to do it. But if you're a compiler, you better keep track of it.
- Sub: Can't call this a Meat-Lovers Delight. Can't call this a sneaky underwater vessel. But you can call this recursively to get to the root.