cruft
/kruhft/
[very common; back-formation from crufty]
1. n. An unpleasant substance. The dust that gathers under your bed is cruft; the TMRC Dictionary correctly noted that attacking it with a broom only produces more.
2. n. The results of shoddy construction.
3. vt. [from hand cruft, pun on `hand craft'] To write assembler code for something normally (and better) done by a compiler (see hand-hacking).
4. n. Excess; superfluous junk; used esp. of redundant or superseded code.
5. [University of Wisconsin] n. Cruft is to hackers as gaggle is to geese; that is, at UW one properly says "a cruft of hackers".
Link map
Entries that mention this one are on the left, entries it mentions on the right. Every box is a link.
Referenced by 10
- C++
- compact
- cruftsmanship
- drunk mouse syndrome
- dumpster diving
- gensym
- hand cruft
- hand-hacking
- prowler
- workaround