Jargon Construction

There are some standard methods of jargonification that became established quite early (i.e., before 1970), spreading from such sources as the Tech Model Railroad Club, the PDP-1 SPACEWAR hackers, and John McCarthy's original crew of LISPers. These include the following:

Of the six listed constructions, verb doubling, peculiar noun formations, anthromorphization, and (especially) spoken inarticulations have become quite general; but punning jargon is still largely confined to MIT and other large universities, and the `-P' convention is found only where LISPers flourish.

Finally, note that many words in hacker jargon have to be understood as members of sets of comparatives. This is especially true of the adjectives and nouns used to describe the beauty and functional quality of code. Here is an approximately correct spectrum:

monstrosity brain-damage screw bug lose misfeature crock kluge hack win feature elegance perfection

The last is spoken of as a mythical absolute, approximated but never actually attained. Another similar scale is used for describing the reliability of software:

broken flaky dodgy fragile brittle solid robust bulletproof armor-plated

Note, however, that `dodgy' is primarily Commonwealth Hackish (it is rare in the U.S.) and may change places with `flaky' for some speakers.

Coinages for describing lossage seem to call forth the very finest in hackish linguistic inventiveness; it has been truly said that hackers have even more words for equipment failures than Yiddish has for obnoxious people.