Programming Jargon Dictionary

Wonderful jargonisms from StackOverflow by bsstahl.

• Automanually
  Used to refer to a batch job or application that should be scheduled or triggered automatically, but due to unspecified reasons requires manual intervention every time. (not the same as automagically)
• Boolean Zen
  The proper practice of using boolean expressions directly without testing for equality to true or false.
• Common Law Feature
  A bug in the application that has existed for so long that it is now part of the expected functionality.
• Disaster Driven Development
  When Your PMs and salesmen promised that You will build a "space shuttle" in one month.
• Egyptian Brackets
  Describes the god-awful c-style where curly-braces are not aligned.
• Heisenbug^wkp
  An oldie, but still valuable…describes a bug that disappears or changes when put under scrutiny.
• Higgs-Bugson
  A hypothetical bug predicted to exist based on a small number of possibly related event log entries and other anecdotal evidence.
• Hindenbug^wkp
  A catastrophic, data destroying bug.
• Jimmy
  A generalized name for a low-level developer (n00b).
• Nopping
  From the assembler instruction NOP (no operation). Similar to nap but doesn’t imply sleep, just zoning out.
• Object Oriented Pasta
  Used to describe spaghetti code wrapped in classes to make it look like an object.
• Perl-Grade Obfuscation
  The highest level of code obfuscation possible. Better than passing code through a 1-way hash function.
• Refuctoring
  The process of taking a well-designed piece of code and, through a series of small, reversible changes, making it completely unmaintainable by anyone except yourself.
• Rubberducking
  The process of talking your own way through a problem, as if talking to a rubber duck.
• Scar Tissue
  Any code that is commented out but still included in the current and/or checked-in version.
• Smurf Naming Convention
  When almost every class has the same prefix. IE, when a user clicks on the button, a SmurfAccountView passes a SmurfAccountDTO to the SmurfAccountController. The SmurfID is used to fetch a SmurfOrderHistory which is passed to the SmurfHistoryMatch…
• Stringly Typed
  One of the antitheses of strongly typed. It describes an implementation that uses strings where more strongly-type options are available.
• Try, Catch, Forget
  An empty catch block, no tracing, not even a comment. No attempt to resolve the error and of course the catch block is not at all specific on the exception type.