17 lines
2.9 KiB
HTML
17 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>one-banana problem</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="../O.html" title="O"/><link rel="previous" href="on-the-gripping-hand.html" title="on the gripping hand"/><link rel="next" href="one-line-fix.html" title="one-line fix"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">one-banana problem</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="on-the-gripping-hand.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">O</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="one-line-fix.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="one-banana-problem"/><dt xmlns="" id="one-banana-problem"><b>one-banana problem</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="grammar">n.</span></dt></dt><dd><p> At mainframe shops, where the computers have operators for routine
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administrivia, the programmers and hardware people tend to look down on the
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operators and claim that a trained monkey could do their job. It is
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frequently observed that the incentives that would be offered said monkeys
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can be used as a scale to describe the difficulty of a task. A one-banana
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problem is simple; hence, “<span class="quote">It's only a one-banana job at the most;
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what's taking them so long?</span>” At IBM, folklore divides the world into
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one-, two-, and three-banana problems. Other cultures have different
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hierarchies and may divide them more finely; at ICL, for example, five
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grapes (a bunch) equals a banana. Their upper limit for the in-house
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<a href="../S/sysape.html"><i class="glossterm">sysape</i></a>s is said to be two bananas and three grapes
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(another source claims it's three bananas and one grape, but observes
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“<span class="quote">However, this is subject to local variations, cosmic rays and
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ISO</span>”). At a complication level any higher than that, one asks the
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manufacturers to send someone around to check things.</p><p>See also <a href="../I/Infinite-Monkey-Theorem.html"><i class="glossterm">Infinite-Monkey Theorem</i></a>.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="on-the-gripping-hand.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../O.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="one-line-fix.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">on the gripping hand </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> one-line fix</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
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