Лексичні та синтактико-стилістичні зміни в сучасній англійській мові: вплив комп’ютерних технологій

2./vi./ to express disgust.

E.g.: "I showed him my latest hack and he barfed" means only that he complained about it, not that he literally vomited.

3./vi./ To fail to work because of unacceptable input, perhaps with a suitable error message, perhaps not.

E.g.: "The division operation barfs if you try to divide by 0." means that the division operation checks for an attempt to divide by zero, and if one is encountered it causes the operation to fail in some unspecified, but generally obvious, manner.

Syn.: choke, gag.

In Commonwealth Hackish, `barf' is generally replaced by `puke' or `vom'.

barfulation /bar`fyoo-lay'sh*n/ /interj./

Variation of barf used around the Stanford area. An exclamation, expressing disgust. On seeing some particularly bad code one might exclaim, "Barfulation! Who wrote this, Quux?"

barfulous /bar'fyoo-l*s/ /adj./

(alt. `barfucious', /bar-fyoo-sh*s/)

Said of something that would make anyone barf, if only for esthetic reasons.

BASIC /bay'-sic/ /n./ [acronym: Beginner's All-purpose Symbolic Instruction Code] A programming language, originally designed for Dartmouth's experimental timesharing system in the early 1960s, which has since become the leading cause of brain damage in proto-hackers. Edsger W. Dijkstra observed in "Selected Writings on Computing: A Personal Perspective" that "It is practically impossible to teach good programming style to students that have had prior exposure to BASIC: as potential programmers they are mentally mutilated beyond hope of regeneration."This is another case (like Pascal) of the cascading lossage that happens when a language deliberately designed as an educational toy gets taken too seriously. A novice can write short BASIC programs (on the order of 10-20 lines) very easily; writing anything longer (a) is very painful, and (b) encourages bad habits that will make it harder to use more powerful languages well. This wouldn't be so bad if historical accidents hadn't made BASIC so common on low-end micros. As it is, it ruins thousands of potential wizards a year.

[1995: Some languages called `BASIC' aren't quite this nasty any more, having acquired Pascal- and C-like procedures and control structures and shed their line numbers. --ESR]

BiCapitalization /n./

The act said to have been performed on trademarks (such as PostScript, NeXT, NeWS, VisiCalc, FrameMaker, TK!solver, EasyWriter) that have been raised above the ruck of common coinage by nonstandard capitalization..

big win /n./

Serendipity. "Yes, those two physicists discovered high-temperature superconductivity in a batch of ceramic that had been prepared incorrectly according to their experimental schedule. Small mistake; big win!" See win big.

bigot /n./ A person who is religiously attached to a particular computer, language, operating system, editor, or other tool (see religious issues). Usually found with a specifier; thus, `cray bigot', `ITS bigot', `APL bigot', `VMS bigot', `Berkeley bigot'. Real bigots can be distinguished from mere partisans or zealots by the fact that they refuse to learn alternatives even when the march of time and/or technology is threatening to obsolete the favored tool. It is truly said "You can tell a bigot, but you can't tell him much."

bits /pl.n./

1. Information. Examples: "I need some bits about file formats." ("I need to

know about file formats.") Compare core dump, sense 4. 2. Machine-readable representation of a document, specifically as contrast ally, the opposite of `real computer' (see Get a real computer!). See also mess-dos, toaster, and toy.