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comparatives

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comparatives


  1  definition  found 
 
  From  Jargon  File  (4.2.3,  23  NOV  2000)  [jargon]: 
 
  Comparatives  -------------- 
 
  Finally,  note  that  many  words  in  hacker  jargon  have  to  be  understood 
  as  members  of  sets  of  comparatives.  This  is  especially  true  of  the 
  adjectives  and  nouns  used  to  describe  the  beauty  and  functional  quality 
  of  code.  Here  is  an  approximately  correct  spectrum: 
 
  monstrosity  brain-damage  screw  bug  lose  misfeature  crock  kluge  hack 
  win  feature  elegance  perfection 
 
  The  last  is  spoken  of  as  a  mythical  absolute,  approximated  but  never 
  actually  attained.  Another  similar  scale  is  used  for  describing  the 
  reliability  of  software: 
 
  broken  flaky  dodgy  fragile  brittle  solid  robust  bulletproof 
  armor-plated 
 
  Note,  however,  that  `dodgy'  is  primarily  Commonwealth  Hackish  (it  is 
  rare  in  the  U.S.)  and  may  change  places  with  `flaky'  for  some  speakers. 
 
  Coinages  for  describing  {lossage}  seem  to  call  forth  the  very  finest 
  in  hackish  linguistic  inventiveness;  it  has  been  truly  said  that 
  hackers  have  even  more  words  for  equipment  failures  than  Yiddish  has 
  for  obnoxious  people. 
 
 




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