12 lines
609 B
Plaintext
12 lines
609 B
Plaintext
juggling eggs
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vi. Keeping a lot of state in your head while modifying a program. Don't
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bother me now, I'm juggling eggs , means that an interrupt is likely to
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result in the program's being scrambled. In the classic 1975 first-contact
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SF novel The Mote in God's Eye , by Larry Niven and Jerry Pournelle, an
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alien describes a very difficult task by saying We juggle priceless eggs in
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variable gravity. It is possible that this was intended as tribute to a less
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colorful use of the same image in Robert Heinlein's influential 1961 novel
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Stranger in a Strange Land. See also hack mode and on the gripping hand.
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