77 lines
7.7 KiB
HTML
77 lines
7.7 KiB
HTML
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="ISO-8859-1" standalone="no"?>
|
||
<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml"><head><title>kluge</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="../K.html" title="K"/><link rel="previous" href="kludge.html" title="kludge"/><link rel="next" href="kluge-around.html" title="kluge around"/></head><body><div class="navheader"><table width="100%" summary="Navigation header"><tr><th colspan="3" align="center">kluge</th></tr><tr><td width="20%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="kludge.html">Prev</a> </td><th width="60%" align="center">K</th><td width="20%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="kluge-around.html">Next</a></td></tr></table><hr/></div><dt><a id="kluge"/><dt xmlns="" id="kluge"><b>kluge</b>: <span xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" class="pronunciation">/klooj/</span></dt></dt><dd><p> [from the German ‘klug’, clever; poss. related to
|
||
Polish & Russian ‘klucz’ (a key, a hint, a main
|
||
point)]</p></dd><dd><p> 1. <span class="grammar">n.</span> A Rube Goldberg (or Heath
|
||
Robinson) device, whether in hardware or software. </p></dd><dd><p> 2. <span class="grammar">n.</span> A clever programming trick
|
||
intended to solve a particular nasty case in an expedient, if not clear,
|
||
manner. Often used to repair bugs. Often involves
|
||
<a href="../A/ad-hockery.html"><i class="glossterm">ad-hockery</i></a> and verges on being a
|
||
<a href="../C/crock.html"><i class="glossterm">crock</i></a>. </p></dd><dd><p> 3. <span class="grammar">n.</span> Something that works for
|
||
the wrong reason. </p></dd><dd><p> 4. <span class="grammar">vt.</span> To insert a kluge into a
|
||
program. “<span class="quote">I've kluged this routine to get around that weird bug, but
|
||
there's probably a better way.</span>” </p></dd><dd><p> 5. [WPI] <span class="grammar">n.</span> A feature that is
|
||
implemented in a <a href="../R/rude.html"><i class="glossterm">rude</i></a> manner.</p></dd><dd><p>Nowadays this term is often encountered in the variant spelling
|
||
‘kludge’. Reports from <a href="../O/old-fart.html"><i class="glossterm">old fart</i></a>s are
|
||
consistent that ‘kluge’ was the original spelling, reported
|
||
around computers as far back as the mid-1950s and, at that time, used
|
||
exclusively of <span class="emphasis"><em>hardware</em></span> kluges. In 1947, the
|
||
<i class="citetitle">New York Folklore Quarterly</i> reported a classic
|
||
shaggy-dog story ‘Murgatroyd the Kluge Maker’ then current in
|
||
the Armed Forces, in which a ‘kluge’ was a complex and puzzling
|
||
artifact with a trivial function. Other sources report that
|
||
‘kluge’ was common Navy slang in the WWII era for any piece of
|
||
electronics that worked well on shore but consistently failed at
|
||
sea.</p><p>However, there is reason to believe this slang use may be a decade
|
||
older. Several respondents have connected it to the brand name of a device
|
||
called a “<span class="quote">Kluge paper feeder</span>”, an adjunct to mechanical
|
||
printing presses. Legend has it that the Kluge feeder was designed before
|
||
small, cheap electric motors and control electronics; it relied on a
|
||
fiendishly complex assortment of cams, belts, and linkages to both power
|
||
and synchronize all its operations from one motive driveshaft. It was
|
||
accordingly temperamental, subject to frequent breakdowns, and devilishly
|
||
difficult to repair — but oh, so clever! People who tell this story
|
||
also aver that ‘Kluge’ was the name of a design
|
||
engineer.</p><p>There is in fact a Brandtjen & Kluge Inc., an old family business
|
||
that manufactures printing equipment — interestingly, their name is
|
||
pronounced <span class="pronunciation">/kloo´gee/</span>!
|
||
Henry Brandtjen, president of the firm, told me (ESR, 1994) that his
|
||
company was co-founded by his father and an engineer named Kluge <span class="pronunciation">/kloo´gee/</span>, who built and co-designed
|
||
the original Kluge automatic feeder in 1919. Mr. Brandtjen claims,
|
||
however, that this was a <span class="emphasis"><em>simple</em></span> device (with only four
|
||
cams); he says he has no idea how the myth of its complexity took hold.
|
||
Other correspondents differ with Mr. Brandtjen's history of the device and
|
||
his allegation that it was a simple rather than complex one, but agree that
|
||
the Kluge automatic feeder was the most likely source of the
|
||
folklore.</p><p><a href="../T/TMRC.html"><i class="glossterm">TMRC</i></a> and the MIT hacker culture of the early
|
||
'60s seems to have developed in a milieu that remembered and still used
|
||
some WWII military slang (see also <a href="../F/foobar.html"><i class="glossterm">foobar</i></a>). It
|
||
seems likely that ‘kluge’ came to MIT via alumni of the many
|
||
military electronics projects that had been located in Cambridge (many in
|
||
MIT's venerable Building 20, in which <a href="../T/TMRC.html"><i class="glossterm">TMRC</i></a> is also
|
||
located) during the war.</p><p>The variant ‘kludge’ was apparently popularized by the
|
||
<a href="../D/Datamation.html"><i class="glossterm">Datamation</i></a> article mentioned under
|
||
<a href="kludge.html"><i class="glossterm">kludge</i></a>; it was titled <i class="citetitle">How to Design a
|
||
Kludge</i> (February 1962, pp. 30, 31). This spelling was probably
|
||
imported from Great Britain, where <a href="kludge.html"><i class="glossterm">kludge</i></a> has an
|
||
independent history (though this fact was largely unknown to hackers on
|
||
either side of the Atlantic before a mid-1993 debate in the Usenet group
|
||
<tt class="systemitem">alt.folklore.computers</tt> over the
|
||
First and Second Edition versions of this entry; everybody used to think
|
||
<a href="kludge.html"><i class="glossterm">kludge</i></a> was just a mutation of
|
||
<a href="kluge.html"><i class="glossterm">kluge</i></a>). It now appears that the British, having
|
||
forgotten the etymology of their own ‘kludge’ when
|
||
‘kluge’ crossed the Atlantic, repaid the U.S. by lobbing the
|
||
‘kludge’ orthography in the other direction and confusing their
|
||
American cousins' spelling!</p><p>The result of this history is a tangle. Many younger U.S. hackers
|
||
pronounce the word as <span class="pronunciation">/klooj/</span> but
|
||
spell it, incorrectly for its meaning and pronunciation, as
|
||
‘kludge’. (Phonetically, consider huge, refuge, centrifuge, and
|
||
deluge as opposed to sludge, judge, budge, and fudge. Whatever its
|
||
failings in other areas, English spelling is perfectly consistent about
|
||
this distinction.) British hackers mostly learned <span class="pronunciation">/kluhj/</span> orally, use it in a restricted
|
||
negative sense and are at least consistent. European hackers have mostly
|
||
learned the word from written American sources and tend to pronounce it
|
||
<span class="pronunciation">/kluhj/</span> but use the wider
|
||
American meaning!</p><p>Some observers consider this mess appropriate in view of the word's
|
||
meaning.</p></dd><div class="navfooter"><hr/><table width="100%" summary="Navigation footer"><tr><td width="40%" align="left"><a accesskey="p" href="kludge.html">Prev</a> </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="u" href="../K.html">Up</a></td><td width="40%" align="right"> <a accesskey="n" href="kluge-around.html">Next</a></td></tr><tr><td width="40%" align="left" valign="top">kludge </td><td width="20%" align="center"><a accesskey="h" href="../index.html">Home</a></td><td width="40%" align="right" valign="top"> kluge around</td></tr></table></div></body></html>
|