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Posted on by george jeffry

Password:

  1. password 
  2. Favorite pet, children’s birthdates, or last movie reference you remember.

For a list of your co-worker’s passwords, just look at her sticky-notes on her monitor.

Partial Class:

Classless by half.

Pattern:

Nervous habit typified by repetitive actions.

Persistence Layer:

  1. The magician’s hat where programmers reach in and data come out.
  2. Where old data go to lie.
  3. Programmers who won’t go away.

Pie Chart:

  1. Most complex graphic possible in an executive portal.
  2. When rendered in Flash©, the graphic that is capable of revealing all critical corporate states to those with the gift of interpretation.
  3. A single-dimensional statistic shown in a two-dimensional format, thereby granting further legitimacy to a marginal calculation.

Pinning:

  1. In college, an act that the boy believed reserved a date but the girl believed reserved a husband.
  2. In programming, an act believed by the programmer to avoid the problems of unmanaged code but which the unmanaged code knows will allow the programmer to avoid the problems of stability.

POCO:

  1. Spanish for small.
  2. Programmer for anemic.
  3. Plain Ol’ C (or CLR) Object; often overheard whistling vaguely familiar but otherwise unremarkable contemporary music from the ’70s.

POJO:

Black Coffee.

Polymorphism:

  1. Shape-shifting for classes.
  2. A principle tenet in Object Oriented Languages.
  3. Not possible in the most popular languages. Therefore, usually mentioned as an “out” for poor design.

Portal:

  1. A universally accessible program providing complete access to data in a simple and fully understandable format, using architecture that is cheap, written in simple code that is inexpensive to create and update, and is free of error.
  2. Any solution to the misunderstood problem when there is no more money.
  3. Rhymes with Orange.

Power Point:

  1. A blank page that is God’s continuous demonstration that, even when given templates and pretty backgrounds, it’s still not easy being God.
  2. Proof that the universe has insufficient bullet points and more must be constantly provided to assure the continuous degradation of all energy to chaos.
  3. Microsoft’s attempt to provide the managerial mind with a wallow in which to slop, but revealing that managerial or not, it’s still a wallow. I’m sure it’s pretty slop.

Presentation Layer:

  1. The programmer’s disdain for users, revealed in the least usable combination of buttons, menus, and lists; masquerading as the user interface for an application, touted as a benefit to users and sold as an asset.
  2. The portion of an application that is visible and, therefore, most important.
  3. The only part of any automation product that is apparent to a client and, therefore, the entire and complete application, to him.
  4. That part of any design that will be shortchanged, regardless of budget.

This accounts for the vast differences in acceptance between unit testing (that relies on logic) and user testing (that relies on presentation).

Profit Center:

  1. Those departments of an enterprise deemed responsible for the profits of a company.
  2. Those individuals or departments whose hands land the profitable income, regardless of the logical and emotional snarl the money visited along the way or who may, ultimately bear the burden for delivery.
  3. The only parts of the entire company invited to play golf with the CEO.
  4. The actual and only reason to hire programmers in an enterprise: to make it easier to make a profit. IT, therefore, is a profit center.

Project:

  1. Husbands, the day after the wedding.
  2. Fantastic development opportunities the day before a project manager is assigned.
  3. Software by Microsoft that, when wielded by a project manager, is capable of crushing the very life and essence from a plum development product so that the pit, stem, and gristle can be tracked and delivered.

Programmer:

  1. Unpopular misfit, who, by trick of history and technology, now has a bigger house in a better neighborhood than the high-school linebacker who used to taunt him.
  2. Still an unpopular misfit. Some things never change.
  3. The vessel, without honor in the organization, who makes enlightenment out of excrement.
  4. Chattel paid not to think — who must, nonetheless.

“Hey, look!” cried the programmer. “The VCR no longer blinks [12:00]!”

Programming:

  1. An artform often mistaken for manufacturing.
  2. Trench warfare often mistaken for art.
  3. The creative act of producing, ex nihilo, a new solution for a new problem.
  4. Ongoing evidence that In The Beginning is a lot harder than most people think.
  5. Greek: From pro- forth, and graphein to write. Therefore, a writing forth, often without meaning other than in anticipation and expectation of perfection.
  6. Setting the correct time on the VCR.

Project Manager:

(see Manager)

Property:

  1. A tangible item possessed by an individual as a consequence of some work or act.
  2. A virtual value possessed by an object as a consequence of some work or event.

Protocol:

  1. A rigorous set of rules, defined by the I.E.E.E., for establishing and maintaining communications.
  2. That set of rules, used by programmers, without any such rigor.



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