Computer Proverbs

[James A. Landau]

In a message dated Wed, 17 Jan 2001 12:59:43  Eastern Standard Time,
Mark_Mandel at DRAGONSYS.COM writes:

>"James A. Landau" <JJJRLandau at AOL.COM> writes [irritating MIME artefacts
>removed]:

Hmmm.  That makes it sound "as if" I have developed a technique for sending
obscene gestures via e-mail.

> I would not call this (and some other terms James cites) a proverb,
>but rather a term, an expression, a piece of jargon, a specialized lexical
item.

You are correct.  A proverb is a maxim, which Webster's 10th Collegiate
defines as "a general truth, fundamental principle, or rule of conduct".
What I supplied were "pieces of jargon" that I thought were particularly
colorful or off-the-wall.  Fred Shapiro asked for "catch-phrases" as well as
for "proverbs".

BTW, I find it difficult to imagine a proverb that does not have a verb in it.

Fred Shapiro is going to have two problems (at least) with his collection.
First, he is going to have to try to weed out ringers.  There is a cottage
industry of supplying lists of humorous sayings, with computers being a
favorite target.  However, the compilers of the lists feel themselves under
no obligation to restrict themselves to already existing sayings but feel
free to invent their own.

Second, there is the problem of sayings, legitimate or otherwise, that
actually arise from other fields and which are attributed pseudopigraphically
to computer people.  For instance, I have on my desk a 19-page listing of
computer sayings.  Some are thoughtful and some are amusing, but the list
includes items from Erma Bombeck (who probably never wrote a computer program
in her life) and Lord Acton (who definitely never did).

(A photocopy of this listing will be sent to Fred Shapiro as soon as someone
supplies me with his snail-mail address.)

Let's consider the term "black box".  On first glance it sounds facetious,
perhaps something found in the "Dilbert" comic strip.  However, it is a
serious term with a specific meaning: a piece of hardware or software for
which you that input x always gives output y but for which you have no
knowledge of how the output is generated from the input.  Example: "black box
testing" in which you test a program by entering a variety of inputs and
writing bug reports on any outputs that are wrong or suspicious or ambiguous
or whatever, but in which you are not given the source code of the program so
that you are restricted to analyzing the outputs.

Obviously some computer person invented the term "black box"?  Probably not.
I first encountered this term in 1963 in a math class (the instructor gave us
the continued-fraction algorithm for solving Diophantine equations and called
it "a black box", and later spent the several lectures needed to explain how
this less-than-obvious algorithm works).  The following year in a chemistry
class we were given actual sealed boxes (yes, they were painted black) with
the assignment of trying to determine what was in the box without opening it.

Actually the concept, though not the term "black box", goes back to that poem
about the blind men trying to describe an elephant.

Some more computer sayings:  in a Government office I once worked in, it was
popular to say "Close enough for government work."  One day somebody's
program failed because an "m" was typed for an "n".  He said "close enough
for government work" and was promptly told, "You don't work for the
government.  You work for the computer."

The latest fashion in computer hardware is the RISC ("Reduced Instruction Set
Computer", which actually was invented by Seymour Cray with the CDC 6600 of
circa 1962).  A satirical but quite accurate jibe at RISC is that the acronym
stands for "Really Interesting Stuff is in the Compiler").

"spaghetti code"---badly written source code that is too complicated to
follow easily.  I have seen, but only once, the term "pretzel-bending"
applied to the same.

"number crunching"---a program that performs large amounts of numerical
computation.

Microsoft gets a lot of negative comments from inside the computer
profession.  There is a software package named "Microsoft Works."  I once saw
this name iincluded in a list of oxymorons.  Or the following
technically-accurate insult: "Windows 98 is a 32-bit enhancement of a 16-bit
front end to an 8-bit operating system originally written for a 4-bit
computer by a 2-bit company that cannot
stand 1 bit of criticism."

(The preceding statement contains the following pieces of technical jargon:
"front end", "operating system", "n-bit", and "bit" meaning "binary digit".)

If I may be permitted a limerick of my own invention:

         Professor Niklaus Wirth
         Said, "A programming language's worth
                  Depends on its syntax
                  And its handling of IN stacks
         And how well its procedures recurth."

                                    - Jim Landau

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