C

Posted on by george jeffry

C++:

The weapon of choice for arrogant programmers when selecting their method of self-destruction.

C#:

A programming language used by bad programmers to convey legitimacy to bad .NET programs.

Casting:

  1. Selecting actors to play parts in a movie or play.
  2. Swinging a long pole, wildly, in a choreographed exercise intended to outwit fish.
  3. Assigning a different type identity to a variable in an attempt to fool the compiler into treating the old variable like the new type.
       void girlsOnly ( (Caitlin)Bruce );

CEO:

  1. A smile, a great suit, and a handicap lower than three who is entrusted with the worrisome duty of assuring investors during losses, encouraging employees during downturns, discovering VCs by losing during golf, and alternately playing Santa Claus to the stockholders and Scrooge to the employees.
  2. In a company that states, in the employee handbook, that only company PCs running Windows Operating System will be allowed, brings his Mac Air to the office and requires full-time support.
  3. The only person in the company who can get away with firing his brother-in-law, who is head of marketing right now.

CFO:

  1. CPA mind, CEO golf score, R2D2 communication skills, and the unlimited power of the check-book.
  2. Executive officer charged with knowing where all the losses are occurring and obscuring those data from the CEO so he can keep a straight face when playing golf and handing out assurances to the prospective VC to whom he is losing. Badly.
  3. First corporate officer to roll over during the interrogation, spilling all the secrets and making the best deal before the investigators talk to the CEO.

Change Order:

  1. Admission of creative bankruptcy by the shortsighted in hopes of obtaining free work from the unsuspecting.
  2. Prohibited in most agile minds; therefore, in greatest use on agile projects.
  3. Official announcement of impending domain violations.

CIO:

  1. Former programmer or sysadmin who is better at politics than technology.
  2. Walking repository of every buzzword ever published in PC Whirld, ZetaNet, Incorp., Weird, and PC Rag for the past fourteen quarters. Full Data Dump routinely displayed during executive meetings.
  3. Weak-willed executive retained for his constant approbations to ludicrous expectations by the CEO, CFO, COO, or just about anyone who can corner him in the coffee room; who then must transfer all burden of success onto his minions — except, of course, the burden of acclaim.

Clone:

  1. The much cheaper knockoff product that nearly performs almost all of the functions of the original. Said to be much better because it is cheaper; but in reality is much worse because it is cheaper.
  2. The sales manager’s new hire.
  3. Letting the new PM do things the way the old PM did, expecting different results.
  4. The rich celebrity’s new dog that has 100% of the DNA of her old dog, but looks nothing and acts nothing like the original.

“Look at my army,” he cried. “Ten thousand clones and no two of them look alike!”

Cloud:

  1. A meteorological manifestation of condensed vapor, obscuring geological and structural hazards, as well as internal natural hazards. Often capable of destructive behavior.
  2. An ideological manifestation of condensed fervor, obscuring topological and logical structures, as well as internal systemic hazards. Often capable of destructive behavior.
  3. Architecture for distributed computing that is as transparent as its namesake but not nearly as substantive.

Code:

  1. Words that seem familiar used in a way that does not.
  2. Apparently arbitrary words arranged in a predefined way to protect secrecy and obfuscate meaning; especially in programs.

Codebehind:

  1. Logical semantics occluded by visual antics.
  2. Finally getting around to putting logic in place of “ Do Something Here .”

Code Review:

Bloodbath.

Comments:

  1. Cunning and diabolical clues in the life-and-death game of software development and maintenance where the fox attempts to leave just enough correct information for the hounds so they will trust the subtle misdirection that sends them to the chasm floor while the fox watches from the den.
  2. Pseudo-code that neither has tests nor is validated by compiler for syntax, usually accepted as gospel even when its audience knows it was written by the guy who wants the reviewer’s job.

When Columbus arrived in the new world, he wrote India in his log.

Committee:

  1. The corporate acknowledgment that while genius stands alone, real stupidity demands group effort.
  2. Lemmings in business attire — sitting around a large, laminated table — sipping bottled water. While conceding that diving off a cliff into the sea has it’s negatives, cannot get buy-in from Marketing and Engineering about it and adjourn to facilitate consensus.
  3. Insidious executive construct which removes all impediments to failure.
  4. Corporate garrote that makes only half-measures possible when only full-measures will do.

Compile:

Letting someone else’s program debug your code.

Complex:

When heard in conversation, replace with, “I have absolutely no idea how to do this.”

Comprehensive:

  1. Not quite covering the full gamut of the developer’s shockingly pedestrian understanding.
  2. The description of all that could be accomplished within the narrow scope and limited budget.
  3. In quality assurance, that work performed until the minimum-testing criteria were met.
  4. Listing more steps in our process than our competitors.
  5. Everything we could think of in the fifteen minutes the project manager gave us after putting us on the spot to make himself look better in front of the board.

Computer:

  1. The shimmering electronic headstone found on the desks of most programmers — and just about everybody — nowadays. Anticipation of finality precludes having to wait for the habeas/corpus delicti to be formally prepared.
  2. Any of a series of machines with the following common components:
    1. central processor
    2. storage
    3. input
    4. output
    5. tethered idiot awaiting revelation equivalent to wisdom
  3. Any electronic engine of corporate and personal destruction that can be defeated with a opened circuit or rational thought (should any ever be found).
  4. The silicone brain capable of errors and failures at many times the speed ever found in its carbon-and-corporeal counterparts’ vain attempts.

Had God, in his eternal wisdom, considered placing the knowledge of good and evil in a computer,  it would have taken Adam and Eve much longer to fall into sin and disgrace… At least until one of their children turned 13 and began hacking the computer at the center of the garden. The result would have been the same, alas. The human race would still have been kicked from the Garden, and it’s all but certain the serpent would have gifted us with Windows much sooner.

Computer Science:

  1. A science in the same way that pig farming is kosher.
  2. The mythical study of computers and programmers with the goal of explaining them in the physical world and predicting what they will do.
  3. The untidy collision of engineering in machines and artistry in programmers in the hopes of producing automation that does the jobs once performed by the parents of the engineers and the artists.

Consultant:

  1. Short-term project resource.
  2. Scapegoat.
  3. An expendable resource, obtained for a particularly unpleasant task, usually at premium rates. Expected to carry extended loads while insulating the surrounding environs from all exposure. To be discarded after use without fanfare nor any attempt at rehabilitation: as are Huggies.

It is sometimes necessary to hire consultants because there are still some things prostitutes won’t do for money.

Context:

The place where illogic acquires logic and the meaningless take on meaning.

Controller:

  1. The third of the named design layers in the Model-View-Controller, when actually, it should be second.
  2. That portion of an application, regardless of design segregation, that performs work on the data, rather than data storage, retrieval, or presentation.
  3. The code unseen, that works the process unbidden, to form the result undefined, that is the program undocumented.

COO:

  1. Chief Omniscience Officer.
  2. The only man in the company who knows what the company does, how they do it, for whom they do it, the materials necessary to do it, steps it takes to do it, problems faced when doing it right, problems faced when doing it wrong, ways to fix nearly everything that’s wrong with the company, and who, without fail, is ignored in the executive meetings because he curses.
  3. The only executive who doesn’t want to be CEO because he’d rather do something than be something.
  4. The corporate Cardinal de Richelieu to the corporate King Louis XIII.

Cost Center:

  1. An area of a company, specifically annoying to the C-Level, by its habitual inability to provide profit to a company: as are utilities and janitorial services.
  2. Plug-hole, down which the company’s profits are seen to fall.
  3. How dim-sighted overseers view the technical and programming staff, when, in fact, they are a profit center.

Cost Control:

  1. Controlling costs in a company by aligning expected costs with actual.
  2. Going another year with those old servers.
  3. Dropping the data backup service since we never seem to need it, anyway.
  4. No, you may not have a raise.

Cross-Platform:

  1. In systems, that architecture resulting from multiple camps filled with strong-willed bigots working under weak-willed leadership.
  2. In data, a prisoner exchange without the benefit of the Glienicke Bridge.

CRUD:

  1. Acronym for the standard data persistence processes of Create/Read/Update/Delete, but which better implies the quality of content usually found sullying most databases. The acronym was not chosen by chance.
  2. The stuff that comes out of databases when accessed with CRUD.

Cube:

  1. Result of complex data query containing all elements for all dimensions, with all values calculated over all ranges, used to answer all questions.
  2. Workstation configuration incapable of satisfying even a single environmental requirement necessary to concentration and precision.
  3. The way HR assures equal productivity of the summer intern and the senior programmer through identically inadequate conditions.
  4. Convincing evidence that the people who hire technical people cannot imagine what it takes to do the job.


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