WhatIs

/vak'soh-sen'trizm/

[analogy with ethnocentrism]

n. A notional disease said to afflict C programmers who persist in coding according to certain assumptions that are valid (esp. under UNIX) on VAXen but false elsewhere. Among these are:

/vākz-i-zəm/

n. A piece of code that exhibits vaxocentrism in critical areas.

Compare PC-ism, unixism.

/vākz-hərd/

[from oxherd]

n. A VAX operator.

/vākz-en/

[from oxen, perhaps influenced by vixen]

n. (alt. vaxen) The plural canonically used among hackers for the DEC VAX computers.

"Our installation has four PDP-10s and twenty vaxen."

See boxen.

/vākz-ek-tə-mē/

[by analogy with vasectomy]

n. A VAX removal. DEC's Microvaxen, especially, are much slower than newer RISC-based workstations such as the SPARC. Thus, if one knows one has a replacement coming, VAX removal can be cause for celebration.

/vaks/

n. 1. [from Virtual Address eXtension]

The most successful minicomputer design in industry history, possibly excepting its immediate ancestor, the PDP-11. Between its release in 1978 and its eclipse by killer micros after about 1986, the VAX was probably the hacker's favorite machine of them all, esp. after the 1982 release of 4.2 BSD UNIX (see BSD). Esp. noted for its large, assembler-programmer-friendly instruction set -- an asset that became a liability after the RISC revolution.

/veir/ or /var/

n. 

Short for variable.

Compare ARG, param.

/vā-pər-wer/

n. Products announced far in advance of any release (which may or may not actually take place).

/va-nə-var/

n. A bogus technological prediction or a foredoomed engineering concept, esp. one that fails by implicitly assuming that technologies develop linearly, incrementally, and in isolation from one another when in fact the learning curve tends to be highly nonlinear, revolutions are common, and competition is the rule. The prototype was Vannevar Bush's prediction of 'electronic brains' the size of the Empire State Building with a Niagara-Falls-equivalent cooling system for their tubes and relays, made at a time when the semiconductor effect had already been demonstrated.

/və-ni-lə/

[from the default flavor of ice cream in the U.S.]