Improve Your Computer Vocabulary
Analog: Hors
d'oeuvre, usually made from cheese and covered with crushed nuts
Backup: Opposite of go forward
Batch Processing: Making a lot of cookies at once
Binary: Possessing the ability to have friends of both sexes
Bit: 12 1/2 cents
Branch: If watered, it will grow into a computer club (see computer club)
Buffer: Programmer who works in the nude
Bug: 1. Programmer's term for a feature 2. An elusive creature living in a program which makes it incorrect.
Note: the activity of "debugging" or removing bugs from a program ends when a programmer gets tired of doing it, not when
all the bugs are removed
Character density: The number of very weird people in the office, divided by the floor space
Computer: A device designed to speed and automate errors
Computer Club: Used to strike computer forcefully upon receiving error messages
Coding: An addictive drug
Compile: A heap of decomposing vegetable matter
Compiler: Noah Webster (1758-1843)
Console: What one does to a depressed computer
Cursor: An expert in 4-letter words
Dump: A system programmer's work area
Feature: Hardware limitation as described by a marketing representative
Hardware: The parts of a computer which can be kicked
Keyboard: An instrument used for entering errors into a system
Language: A system of organizing and defining error messages
Loop: See loop
Machine-independent Program: A program which will not run on any machine
Microcomputer: One millionth of a computer
Null String: The result of a 4-hour database search
On-line: The idea that a human should always be accessible
Password: The nonsense word taped to your terminal
Performance: A statement of the speed at which a computer system works. Or rather, might work under
certain circumstances. Or was rumored to be working about a month ago
Printer: Johann Gutenberg (1400-1468)
Quality Control: Ensuring that the quality of a product does not get out of hand and add to the cost
of its manufacture or design
Strategy: A long-range plan whose merit cannot be evaluated until sometime after those creating it
have left the organization
User: Someone requiring drug rehabilitation
8-bit machine: A computer selling for $1.00 (see bit)
16-bit machine: A computer selling for $2.00 (see bit)