16 lines
2.9 KiB
HTML
16 lines
2.9 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
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<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>punt</title><link rel="stylesheet" href="../../jargon.css" type="text/css"/><meta name="generator" content="DocBook XSL Stylesheets V1.61.0"/><link rel="home" href="../index.html" title="The Jargon File"/><link rel="up" href="../P.html" title="P"/><link rel="previous" href="punched-card.html" title="punched card"/><link rel="next" href="Purple-Book.html" title="Purple Book"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">punt</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="punched-card.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">P</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="Purple-Book.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="punt"/><dt xmlns="" id="punt"><b>punt</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">v.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> [from the punch line of an old joke referring to American football:
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“<span class="quote">Drop back 15 yards and punt!</span>”] </p></dd><dd><p> 1. To give up, typically without any intention of retrying.
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“<span class="quote">Let's punt the movie tonight.</span>” “<span class="quote">I was going to hack all
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night to get this feature in, but I decided to punt</span>” may mean that
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you've decided not to stay up all night, and may also mean you're not ever
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even going to put in the feature. </p></dd><dd><p> 2. More specifically, to give up on figuring out what the
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<a href="../R/Right-Thing.html"><i class="glossterm">Right Thing</i></a> is and resort to an inefficient hack.
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</p></dd><dd><p> 3. A design decision to defer solving a problem, typically because
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one cannot define what is desirable sufficiently well to frame an
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algorithmic solution. “<span class="quote">No way to know what the right form to dump
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the graph in is — we'll punt that for now.</span>”</p></dd><dd><p> 4. To hand a tricky implementation problem off to some other section
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of the design. “<span class="quote">It's too hard to get the compiler to do that; let's
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punt to the runtime system.</span>” </p></dd><dd><p> 5. To knock someone off an Internet or chat connection; a <span class="firstterm">punter</span> thus, is a person or program that does
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this.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="punched-card.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../P.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="Purple-Book.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">punched card </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> Purple Book</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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