Cruft
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Cruft (occasionally kruft) is computing jargon for "code, data, or software of poor quality".[1] The term may also refer to debris that accumulates on computer equipment. It has been generalized to mean any accumulation of obsolete, redundant, irrelevant, or unnecessary information, especially code.[2]
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[edit] Computing
The FreeBSD handbook refers to leftover object code which accumulates when code has been changed but the program not recompiled as cruft.[3] Such cruft can cause the BSD equivalent of DLL hell.[citation needed]
In the context of Internet or Web addresses (Uniform Resource Locators or "URLs"), cruft refers to the characters which are only relevant or meaningful to the people who created the site, such as implementation details of the computer system which serves the page. Examples of URL cruft include filename extensions such as .php or .html, and internal organizational details such as /public/ or /~users/john/work/drafts/.
Cruft may also refer to unused and out-of-date computer paraphernalia, collected through upgrading, inheritance, or simple acquisition, both deliberate and through circumstance.
Cruft accumulation will result in technical debt which makes adding new features or modifying existing features (even to improve performance) more difficult and time consuming.
[edit] Etymology
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The origin of the term is uncertain, but it may be derived from Harvard University Cruft Laboratory, which was the Harvard Physics Department's radar lab during World War II. As late as the early 1990s, unused technical equipment could be seen stacked in front of Cruft Hall's windows. According to the student body, if the place filled with useless machinery is called Cruft Hall, the machinery itself must be cruft. This image of "discarded technical clutter" quickly migrated from hardware to software. Cruft may also be a play on the old typeface form of the letter "s", rendering "crust" as "cruſt". [4]
Another possible origin is that the word evokes the words crust, fluff and scruffy.[1] The latter word is the source of similar words in Jamaican English such as cruff, meaning scurfy, coarse or uncouth.[1]
[edit] See also
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Look up cruft in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. |
[edit] References
- ^ a b c Hughes, Am (Sep 2008), "Oxford English Dictionary", Isis; an international review devoted to the history of science and its cultural influences (Oxford University Press) 99 (3): 586, ISSN 0021-1753, PMID 18959196, http://books.google.com/books?id=qZdhGQAACAAJ, "Code, data, or software of poor quality."
- ^ "cruft". The Jargon File, version 4.4.7. http://catb.org/jargon/html/C/cruft.html.
- ^ "20.4.16.6. What do I do if something goes wrong?". FreeBSD Handbook, Third Edition. http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en/books/handbook/makeworld.html. Retrieved 2007-08-18.
- ^ "crufty". The Jargon File, version 4.4.7. http://catb.org/jargon/html/C/crufty.html.
[edit] External links
- In the Beginning...was the Command Line - article by Neal Stephenson which includes coverage of the "cruft" concept.
- Verity Stob's Index of Cruftidity at Dr. Dobb's Journal
